Daily Life in Stalag 13
by Goldleaf83
Summary: What's daily life like at Stalag 13? A lot of tedium, some homesickness, memories of the past, plans for the future, and an occasional epiphany.
1. Chapter 1: Barnes

_Author's Note: This will be a series of vignettes, featuring all of the major and some of the minor POW characters in the series, along with a couple of OCs from earlier stories of mine. None of the vignettes need any familiarity with any of my earlier stories to work for new readers, though. The vignettes aren't in chronological order (except the last one does come after the others), but there is an organizing principle. I think you'll all figure it out quite quickly._

ooOoo

 **Chapter 1: Barnes**

It's summer hot today, and humid too. It doesn't usually get real hot here in Germany in the summer, but today's a doozy. It should remind me of the summer air at home in Oklahoma, but somehow the air here in Germany always feels different to me.

But there's one thing that's too familiar: the taste of dust on my tongue. There hasn't been any rain in nearly two weeks, and the compound is dry and dusty.

That's better than the muck we get with too much rain, but it still reminds me of the dust storms from . . . gosh, ten years ago now, during the worst of the Dust Bowl. I was still a kid then, and we lived in the eastern part of Oklahoma, so we didn't get it so bad like the folks so much further west in the Panhandle did, but we still had some storms that dropped dust on us. I talked with Carter about the Dust Bowl once, because he went through worse up on the farm he grew up on in North Dakota. He hates dust too.

So today, which is hot with just enough wind to pick up the dust and swirl it into my eyes and nose and mouth, would of course be the day I pull a work detail picking up cigarette butts and other trash out in the compound. Wish I'd drawn laundry duty instead, like my best buddy Jim Davis did. I'd be with him, for one thing, and that'd be more fun because we're always kidding around. Plus, getting kinda wet washing out uniforms and underclothes sounds pretty good right now in this heat. But no, I'm stuck picking up trash.

Corporal Langenscheidt is supervising us, and he looks as tired and hot as the rest of us. Everything's kind of gray today: him, us, the wooden buildings, the guard towers, our uniforms, the dusty ground. It's like all the color has been sucked out of the world. I sigh. Stalag 13 is so ugly. The only pretty things to look at are the woods outside camp and the sky. But you can't see the woods all that well from a lot of the camp, and today even the sky is a kind of washed-out whitish blue, because there's so much humidity in the air.

We move around one barracks after another, poking one little cigarette butt after another and sticking each one in the long canvas bags we have slung from our shoulders. It's tedious and boring, plus the litter stick is too long for a short guy like me, which makes it awkward for me to reach the trash and put it in my bag. As we finish around the barracks I wish we were done, but Langenscheidt marches us across the compound to do the area around the Kommandantur.

I scan the sky as we work our way across the compound. Clouds are building up, big white fluffy ones that are gray underneath. Not even going to have any color in the sky now. But we should get some relief from the sun when the clouds get here, and maybe even some rain. The guys doing laundry won't be happy with that, because they'll have to take everything down and string it up in the barracks, like we do in the winter. But at least the clean clothes won't be full of dust.

We work our way around the front of the Kommandant's office around to the back, where his quarters are. The clouds are thicker now, and the relief from the sun feels good. I feel a little more wind. It's picking up. There's a little garden in front of the porch, with some ornamental flowers and shrubs, including a couple of rose bushes. In the heat, after the dry weather, all the plants look a bit discouraged, especially the roses. They have a couple of blooms, but they're covered with dust too.

The wind abruptly whips up, picking up the grit and coating us all with another fine layer of dust. I close my eyes and cover my face with my sleeve for a moment, trying not to breathe the stuff in and to keep it outa my eyes. Then suddenly a few raindrops fall, a promise of a real rain to come. Corporal Langenscheidt, after a glance at the glowering sky, tells us we can go back to the barracks, but we have to get rid of our trash bags properly first.

I turn to go when a flash of color grabs my eye, a brilliant deep red against all the background gray. I look a little closer and see that a couple of the spattering raindrops have hit the petals of one of the roses, washing off the dust and revealing a deep red. The wet spot looks like velvet, glows like a jewel, freshly washed by clean water from the sky. It's the prettiest thing I've seen since . . . well, I can't remember when. Reminds me that my Ma has roses like that out behind our house back home, that same deep velvet red.

I suddenly feel a sting in my eyes that has nothing to do with the grit blowing around. Who'd have thought that just seeing raindrops on roses could do that?


	2. Chapter 2: Landry

**Chapter 2: Landry**

I come into the barracks in the mid-afternoon, feeling more tired than I should. I've been coughing out in the compound, from the darned dust, probably. It bothers my lungs so easy these days—dust in the compound, smoke in the barracks. No way to escape it at Stalag 13.

I grab my tin mug and fill it with water and swallow. My throat's scratchy. The water feels good, but it don't chase it away. The burning comes right back.

I hang my head. I know this feeling all too well. I'm taking sick again. Another cold—or worse. Holy cripes, it's gonna go after my weak lungs for sure. Last time it sounded like I had galloping consumption, like some miner who's spent years in the mines eating coal dust. At my worst, I could hawk a loogie with the best of them. I thought I'd never get well, but Wilson kept telling me it was just bronchitis and I would. And he was right, I did get better . . . eventually. Took long enough.

I never used to take sick. I was plenty healthy growing up, no matter all the coal dust in the air. Always is in a coal town, like my Pennsylvania home town, where my people have lived for four generations now. But it wasn't so bad for me growing up. Not like it was in the bad old days for my older uncles. They were breaker boys up in the colliery back in the day before child labor laws. One of 'em died from black lung disease before he turned fourteen. I started in the mines young, soon as I was allowed, day I turned 18, like most of the boys in my town do. Didn't quite finish high school. But that didn't matter much: I was pulling down wages, first to help my old lad and lady, eventually to support my wife and my boy. I was fit enough when I got called up, didn't have a hard time with basic training. And I never had breathing issues while up in our plane, before we got shot down.

It wasn't till I got trapped in a cave-in while we were building the Colonel's tunnel system that I had trouble. Not surprising then, I guess, given how much dirt I took in. I still remember that moment, the dirt coming down on my back, burying me as I tried to cover my head fast with my hands, make me a little breathing space in the dirt. I remember thinking that this was it, and the guys wasn't going to have to bury me because I'd be buried already, and wondering how was the Colonel going to explain it to the krauts.

But the guys was close behind me, and they got me dug out fast enough that I didn't die. Let me tell you, I sure felt resurrected when I came to again, up in the barracks with them all washing the dirt off me. I'd never felt more grateful in my life. But I started coughing up my lungs right off and kept it up for days afterwards, especially after I developed pneumonia. I'm lucky I didn't die, and I know it. Sergeant Wilson, our medic, pulled me through, and through two bouts of bronchitis since then.

I don't want to admit I'm taking sick again now. So I try to ignore how I'm feeling for a while. By dinner I can tell I'm worse. My barracks chief, Corporal Jim Meadows, notices too.

"How you feeling?" Jim asks me, his eyes worried. He can probably hear my breathing, I think.

I wanna shrug it off, but I know why he's asking. If we say something to guards now, I can probably go to the infirmary after roll call. If I don't, I can't go until tomorrow morning. That's what happened last time, and I got a lot worse during the night. Gave all the guys in my barracks a scare. Don't wanna do that to 'em again.

So I answer, carefully 'cause talking is getting harder, "Been better, Jim."

He nods and puts his hand on my shoulder, real gentle. He looks over his shoulder and calls out to Corporal Langenscheidt, who's getting us all together to be counted. "Hey, Langenscheidt. We got a sick man here."

Langenscheidt comes over and looks at me. He pulls out his clipboard and checks me off his list for Barracks 8. "You can go to the infirmary after roll call, Corporal. Wait for me and I will escort you. _Verstehen Sie?_ Can you stand for the roll call?"

"Yeah," I say, feeling oddly comforted by the German phrase Langenscheidt mixes in with his English. It's weird, but it reminds me of home, where people often say something like it. My mind wanders as we wait in formation to be counted, and I remember my dad telling me when he went in the barroom for a growler, "Ya sit right there and don't move until I come get ya, ver-shtay?" And I did understand and stayed put on the sidewalk outside, till he'd gotten his beer to take home. Guess that word's from the Pennsylvania Dutch in our area, maybe? They speak German. But everyone uses it round where I grew up.

I stand in my usual spot, but I can tell my buddies are keeping an eye on me, especially when I start coughing and can't stop for a while. At least I'm not feeling light-headed, so I don't have much fever. Not yet, anyway. When roll call finally ends, Langenscheidt tells me again to wait as he shepherds everybody into the barracks. They all move in quickly, for once. Guess they're trying to help me out.

The infirmary isn't too far away, and Langenscheidt brings me there quick as he can, though I'm walking slow as molasses in January to keep from taking a header. Don't want Langenscheidt to have to pick me up off the ground. He stays right aside me, which makes me feel kinda like I've done something wrong and am being taken to the cooler. That's what an escort from a guard usually means around here.

I guess I am in trouble, just not the cooler kind.

We get there, and Langenscheidt pushes the door open. Sergeant Wilson looks up: the infirmary is almost empty tonight except for Private Dubrow, who tore some ligaments in his knee in a soccer game a couple days ago. Wilson takes one look at me and he's out of his seat, taking me by the elbow and leading me over to one of the cots. Guess I don't look so good.

"Hiya, doc," I greet him. He's not really a doctor, he'd be the first one to tell you that, but he knows a lot about doctoring anyway. He's real good at it, and we're lucky to have him here at Stalag 13.

"How you feeling?" Wilson asks.

"Question of the day," I try to joke, but my laugh turns into a cough. He gives me a look and starts listing symptoms, most of which I have: "I can tell you've already got a cough. How about sore throat? Fatigue? Shortness of breath?"

I nod to all of these, and Langenscheidt, who is still hovering, confirms them too: " _Ja_ , I could hear his breathing as we walked over."

Wilson puts his hand on my forehead. It feels slightly cooler than I do. "Some fever," he sighs, "but not much. Any chills?"

I shake my head. "Not yet."

He helps me out of my uniform jacket and seats me on the bed, while he goes to get a thermometer and his stethoscope. I go on a coughing jag and he gets me a glass of water. I wish I could have a piece of barley candy or a mozhey or even some rock candy to suck on. That'd coat my throat, ease the cough.

Once he's done checking me out, Wilson gets me lying back in the cot, propped up on a bunch of pillows to help me breathe easier. We don't have pillows for our bunks in the barracks, but Colonel Hogan somehow made sure that the infirmary cots got some.

Dubrow looks over at me from his cot aside mine. "Wilson and I were talkin' about pets before you got here. You have any pets growin' up?"

I guess he's trying to get my mind off how bad I'm feeling. Nice of him, but I don't think it'll help. But hey, I'll play along.

"Had a cat as a kid," I tell him between breaths. "Orange tom, named Pumpkin. Good mouser. Raised him from a kitten. He'd lie on my chest, from the night we got him." I cough, not liking the weight I'm feeling in my chest. "Feels like I got a kitten right now."

Dubrow frowns. "Whaddaya mean?"

I point to the top of my chest, right below my collarbones. "Feels like I got a kitten resting on me right here," I say. "Slight weight, prickles like tiny claws and whiskers." I cough again.

"Here, take this." Wilson is holding some homemade cough syrup out to me in a battered spoon: a little schnapps mixed with honey—special dispensation from the Kommandant.

I swallow it gratefully. "Maybe it'll chase that kitten away," I sigh as I lean back, feeling ready to try some sleeping.

Wilson chuckles. "First time I ever heard bronchitis described like whiskers on kittens."

ooOoo

 _Author's Note: Landry is an original character of mine who appears briefly (with bronchitis!) in chapter 2 of my story "There's No Place Like Stalag 13." You should be able to understand this story without having read the earlier one. For those of you who do remember Landry, though, this chapter is set just a few days before his appearance in my other story._

 _I've tried to be true to the dialect of eastern Pennsylvania coal country, Landry's home, so you'll notice some unusual spellings and phrases. My apologies for any mistakes with the dialect to those who know it better. A few translations for words not self-explanatory, in order of usage in the story:_ _ **galloping consumption**_ _= tuberculosis;_ _ **hawk a loogie**_ _= to spit after clearing the throat (the bigger the loogie, the prouder the spitter);_ _ **breaker boys**_ _= coal-mining workers, usually children, whose job was to separate impurities like rock from coal by hand in a coal breaker;_ _ **colliery**_ _= a coal mine;_ _ **old lad, old lady**_ _= father, mother;_ _ **growler**_ _= a round lunch pail or other bucket filled with draft beer at a bar;_ _ **header**_ _= a fall or slip, landing on your head;_ _ **barley candy**_ _= opaque hard candy;_ _ **mozhey**_ _= homemade hard candy made from molasses;_ _ **rock candy**_ _= a simple candy made of a mixture of sugar and water that hardens on a string, making sort of a chain of sugar "rocks."_

 _The kitten-sensation of bronchitis is drawn from my own experience with a bout of it around twenty years ago: that's how I described it to a friendly pharmacist. "You need antibiotics," he told me cheerfully and got me the best over-the-counter medications he could, to tide me over from early Saturday evening to Monday morning when I could see a doctor and get a prescription. The homemade cough medicine is a variation on a family recipe, suggested by (believe it or not) my pediatrician back when I was four or five._


	3. Chapter 3: LeBeau

**Chapter 3: LeBeau**

I cannot get to sleep tonight. Most nights, it is no problem. Mornings in Stalag 13 always come early, and our true bed time at night usually comes long after lights out. With so little time to sleep, I am usually out like a light, as André would say.

But tonight is not one of those nights. We had a surprise late roll call, and the cold air has woken me up too much. I lie on my left side for a while, using my arm as my pillow, then turn on my right side. Still awake, after a while I switch back to my back, looking up at the rafters, barely visible in the dim light from the stove.

I have a routine that calms me most nights like this. I think through my restaurant, for after the war. Sometimes I run through locations in Paris, wandering down streets in memory: the Latin Quarter? The edge of Pigalle perhaps, or more directly in Montmartre?

Some nights I debate names. Something referring to food? _Plat du Jour? Non_ , too plain. Or something a little symbolic? _À Gogo_ perhaps, or _Au Courant_ , or _Savoir-Faire_. _Panache?_ Or _Œuvre_. . . ? Or something to celebrate the war's end: _Renaissance? Bon Vivant?_ Or something romantic . . . _Billet-doux_ , or _Mosaïque_. Sometimes I let myself wonder wistfully if Marya would join me. I would call the restaurant _Le Papillon et La Rose_ —myself as the butterfly and her as the rose, I thought at first, but she . . . she is the one who flits from one place and one heart to another, not I.

Other times I sort through colors for paint and curtains. Perhaps yellow with blue accents, as my _grand-maman_ had in her dining room: that would be cheerful and inviting and suggest a country inn. Or maybe something warm and rich, gold with red. . . .

With any color scheme I set the tables in my mind with white damask tablecloths and _serviettes_ . . . although perhaps the napkins should pick up the accent colors rather than being plain white? Blue or red against the white tablecloth background would look well. I debate silverware and dishes, contemplating patterns and shapes. Anything would be better than the bare table boards and tin bowls and plates we use daily here.

One idea that never changes is that the waiters will each have a silver-plated _ramasse-miette_ , polished to a shine, to scrape the crumbs from the tables after each course. I remember my own, a gift from my father when I became a waiter, my first promotion in the restaurant I trained at. I recall the dignity I felt when he gave it to me and the pride in me that I saw in his eyes. I told myself at the time that I would keep it forever. But I did not then foresee the war.

I wonder what has become of it.

I wrench my mind from the memory, turning my mind to my restaurant kitchen. Furnishing that in my imagination always has the greatest appeal. I am so tired of cooking with cheap enameled tin saucepans and making coffee in a dented enameled tin pot. Poor Newkirk always complains that his tea water tastes of coffee—even though the coffee beans I have to put in our coffee are few and far between. But I have no other kettle, ever since _le colonel_ and Kinch commandeered the electric coffee pot to hide the speaker for the mic that we have hidden in the Kommandant's office. So now we cannot use it for coffee, and I must make the tin coffeepot serve for both coffee and tea. I constantly feel the pinch of not having the right type of pot for the dish I am preparing. Last week I had to cook asparagus for the Kommandant, with no proper asparagus steamer of course, and it took great ingenuity to cook the stalks properly without overcooking the heads. _Colonel_ Hogan complimented my canapes that evening, but the asparagus worried me far more.

I will have a full set of cookware in my restaurant kitchen! Lovingly, I count through them. For the oven: braziers and roasters, cake pans and casseroles. Several well-seasoned cast iron frying pans for the stove, of course, a few of them enameled. I run through sauté pans, saucepans, stew pans, stock pots: all of them copper well lined with steel, shined brightly each day, hanging from hooks over the preparation tables to be grabbed with ease when needed.

I turn on my stomach, feeling more relaxed. Sleep is not far. I hear a distinctive snort across the room and open my eyes slightly. Looking past the stove, the battered tin coffeepot sitting on its top, I see Newkirk in the dim light, lying in his upper bunk, also on his stomach. He is the one out like a light tonight. My lips curve slightly as for a moment I watch him sleep.

My smile fades. When the war is over, Pierre will go home to London; I to Paris. But we will see each other; we have sworn it. We will not be so far apart that visits between old war comrades will be impossible. And I shall keep in my kitchen a bright copper kettle, just for him, to heat water to make my friend his "cuppa" tea when he comes to see me.


	4. Chapter 4: Newkirk

**Chapter 4: Newkirk**

Cor blimey, it's cold tonight. So o' course we get stuck with an extra bloody roll call. At least the Colonel got wind of it ahead of time, so no one's off outside the fence.

I stick my hands into my RAF greatcoat pockets, grateful tonight for the extra layer. Didn't have one the last couple of winters—suppose that'll teach me to get captured by the Krauts in the early summer. But since the Colonel became senior officer here he's been insisting that the Kommandant get and pass along the uniforms the Red Cross has for those of us as have been "guests of the Third Reich" for a while. So I finally have a warm coat for a German winter. It's only taken two bloody years.

No gloves, though. Mustn't grumble, me mum would say. 'Course, the coat is a big improvement on just me jacket, and it does have pockets.

Everyone's too tired tonight to do more than shift and stamp in place, trying to stay a bit warm. Even the Colonel, next to me, isn't saying anything tonight, and he's turned up his jacket collar and put his hands in his own pockets. At least he has gloves, good lined leather ones, though that leather jacket of his isn't as warm as my good wool British greatcoat. You'd think he'd have a bigger, warmer coat, him being an officer and all that. But I never hear him complain about it.

I had a good pair of gloves before the war. Wish I had 'em now. They'd come in right handy when the Colonel has a job for me to do when we don't want to leave traces behind us. Kid leather those gloves were, hand stitched, pearl grey, soft and supple and fitted me like a second skin, especially with that thin silk lining that didn't hardly take up any space inside. You could even see me thumbnails through 'em, they were so thin and fine. A perfect pair of kid gloves to kit out a proper toff, though I had more _practical_ uses for 'em, shall we say.

I lifted them right out of a gent's pocket one evening, along with his watch. Not what you'd call proper behavior, I know, but he'd stiffed me a tip three days running. I'd seen he had plenty of brass to spend on frills for himself, though. He just didn't feel a need to support those in the laboring classes in the establishment he was staying at, though he certainly availed himself of the services offered—and tried with some not offered too. He made improper advances to Betty, one of the maids there; I found her crying in the pantry after. Made me see red, him treating her that way, and her not more than fifteen.

So that was the first time I ever picked a pocket outside a magic show. Can't say as it troubled me conscience much, then or now. Though I admit to myself I thought hard about keeping it, I gave the pocket watch to Betty; told her to put it away against lean times in the future. A watch is always handy for pawning, if you find yourself short o' cash. I kept the gloves for myself, though, finding as they fit me so well and having ideas on how they might be useful for me. And they did turn out quite useful in the long run.

So yeah, I'd like to have those gloves again now, for both less official activities and cold roll calls. Not exactly warm, and certainly not uniform, but a lot better than the nothing I've got.

I shiver, then stamp my feet, yawning as I do. I'm so tired. Ol' Klink's certainly taking his sweet time getting out here tonight.

Maybe Mavis'll get to knitting again soon. Maybe she already has. I mentioned not having any gloves in a couple of letters to her in the summer. I got a knitted scarf from her last winter: that was a right good package she sent me then, with its vests and nightshirt and socks and cigarettes and some chocolates. I know leather gloves are beyond her means and I think knitted gloves might be beyond her talents, but I'd be right happy with a pair of warm woolen mittens.

ooOoo

 _Author's note: Newkirk's great coat makes sporadic appearances; he doesn't wear it in some clearly winter episodes when you'd expect him to. So this might be one reason we don't always see him wearing it._


	5. Chapter 5: Davis

**Chapter 5: Davis**

 _Author's Note: Davis and his buddy Barnes originally appear in the series episode "Reservations Are Required." There are a couple of very small references to earlier Barnes and Davis stories I've written that those who have read them might pick up, though you don't need to have read them for this story. Those are, in order of composition: "In the Cooler" and its sequel "Out of the Cooler," "Giving Thanks," "Toys for Boys," and the first chapter of this story. Barnes is the narrator in those stories; this is the first time I've made Davis a narrator._

ooOoo

I stare at the three small potatoes and slice of bread that Harrison has dumped on the tin plate for me.

"This is dinner?" I ask dispiritedly. I hear groans of disappointment from Barnes and Garlotti behind me as they gaze at my plate too. Usually there's at least a little bit of something extra beyond potatoes and bread, but not tonight.

Harrison shrugs. "We're out of any margarine, cheese, or canned meat until the next Red Cross packages arrive." His gaze slides past me to Colonel Hogan, in line behind Garlotti.

The Colonel doesn't look any happier than the rest of us. "I've been asking Klink when we'll get some; he wants the relief to arrive almost as much as we do."

"I bet he's not eating three little boiled potatoes and a slice of plain black bread that's half sawdust for dinner," I snap.

Barnes puts his hand on my elbow. I'm not sure if he's trying to calm me down or warning me about not pushing Hogan on something that's not our CO's fault.

"Take your dinner, Davis," the Colonel orders me. "You're holding up the line. It's not the kind of food that improves with aging."

There's a bunch of murmurs of agreement behind me, so I pick the plate up and trudge over to the table. Barnes is close behind me, and he slides in right next to me when I sit down. The rest of the guys from our barracks join us and we all glumly tackle what's passing for a meal tonight.

I don't say anything more, but I don't have to. Carter takes up the complaints. Since he's pretty easy going _and_ one of the first string team, I guess he can get away with griping to the CO.

"Gosh, Colonel, it's been ages since we got Red Cross packages, or mail either. What's the hold up?"

Colonel Hogan sighs as he tries to cut the potatoes with his spoon. They're undercooked tonight. Crunchy is not what you want with potatoes.

"We're victims of the Allies' success, or so Klink tells me," he says. "Our packages used to come from Portugal: it was the easiest neutral country for the Red Cross to use because it had a good and convenient port in Lisbon. But since the Allies' invasion of France in June, the German planes and trains that used to travel from Portugal can't cross France, and routes via Switzerland through France and Italy have been affected too. Klink says they're trying to reroute to move mail and Red Cross packages from Sweden, but it's taking time to establish the new route." He pauses to eat another bite of potato. "Plus, there are a lot more prisoners this year in all the camps, so the resources that have been getting through don't go as far."

That's sure true. Between the bombing raids and prisoners taken during the ground fighting, there's a lot more "guests of the Third Reich" in Germany. Stalag 13 is a fairly small camp, but it's been enlarged and is getting more crowded. The Colonel wasn't happy about Klink moving the wire earlier this summer to build more huts and how we had to cut down so many trees for it, but at least it wasn't on the side of camp where we've got the emergency tunnel, and now we have a lot of firewood for winter.

"We've been pretty lucky: the work we've done on the farms around here last spring and this summer has stretched our food supplies, and we're getting part of the harvest," he adds.

That's a joke, I think bitterly: the work "we've" done. I haven't noticed Colonel Hogan using any hoes or shovels—manual labor in fields being below an officer, of course. Barnes kicks me under the table; I guess he can tell what I'm thinking. He doesn't have to worry, though. I know better than to say that where the Colonel can hear me. And I do know he's trying to be encouraging, keep up our morale.

The problem is that when you can tell someone's doing that, it kinda takes away from the effect he's trying to create.

Colonel Hogan continues, "We'll just have to hope that the new routes are working soon and we'll get deliveries now that fall's here."

I also notice what he _doesn't_ say, that it's been over three months since the invasion. The Allies liberated Paris last month, and now they're fighting hard to take northern France and Belgium; they aren't yet close to invading Germany. So we'll probably have to spend at least part, if not all, of another miserable winter here before we're liberated, unless Germany will surrender to keep from being invaded. No one expects they'll do that, though. And that means we'll still need weeks and months of relief rations to supplement what little the Germans have to give us.

I wonder how much the Colonel knows about the Western front campaign. We hear what the new prisoners tell us, but it wouldn't surprise me if the Colonel gets more specific intelligence over the radio. He's careful, our Colonel, not to promise us what he can't be sure of. I'll give him that. So what he's not saying about liberation is important. And that just depresses me further, for all that he's trying to cheer us up.

Back in August I was hoping that maybe we could be home for Christmas this year, if the Soviets pushed hard enough from the east and the Americans and British and French could move in from the south and west. I'd be able to be with Mom and Charlie for the holidays . . . and propose to Lillie, give her a ring as her Christmas gift. Doesn't look that'll happen now.

Swallowing my undercooked potato just got harder.

ooOoo

 _Six days later_. . .

Barnes and I are playing catch in the compound, having gotten one of the gloves and balls from the rec hall. He's throwing steadily, sending them right into my glove one after another. My buddy's a good pitcher, and everybody always wants him for shortstop whenever we play baseball, just like I'm always wanted for basketball—my height is an advantage there, at least.

As we play, we see Schultz cross the yard and go into our barracks. We're kinda wondering if we should go see if we're needed when Colonel Hogan comes out, zipping up his jacket. Schultz trails him across the yard and they both vanish into the Kommandantur.

Huh. Klink must've wanted the Colonel for something.

We keep playing, Barnes coaching me on how to throw smoother than I do, a process hampered by our tendency to keep an eye on the Kommandantur until the Colonel comes back out. After about ten minutes the Colonel emerges, looking satisfied. His gaze latches onto the two of us as he stands on the porch.

"Barnes! Davis!" he calls, gesturing us to come to him, so we head right over, looking up at him, ready to help. "Get a work detail together," he tells us. "We'll need about ten guys." He laughs as he sees our faces fall. "I think you'll be happy about this assignment, boys. Feel like unloading some Red Cross packages? There'll be a truck arriving in about fifteen minutes."

"Yes, _sir_!" we chorus, big grins on our faces.

Quarter of an hour later the truck pulls from up to the kitchen storage space. By then we have about two dozen guys ready to help. No trouble finding volunteers for this work detail! The truck pulls up by the door to the storage space by the kitchen and we all form a line, passing along the packages one by one to the guys stacking them up. Colonel Hogan stands nearby with Kommandant Klink, arms folded around himself that way he does, watching us unload the truck.

The number of boxes I see in the truck isn't what we'd hoped for, nowhere near as many as we have men in the camp. But as we begin unloading I overhear Colonel Hogan say to the Kommandant, "Well, it's a start. If the American boxes arrive early next week like you expect, we'll be okay."

Oh, of course. We get separate sets of packages from the British, American, and Canadian Red Cross organizations. So this shipment has enough for the British prisoners here. I'm glad for once that the packages get all pooled together, divided up so there will be some stuff to supplement dinner for the whole camp in the mess hall, with other stuff divided among individual barracks to make lunches from. So we'll all get some things from this set of boxes, and then share out the American ones when they arrive too. I hope that'll be soon.

We finish stacking the boxes, and I run my hands over the top box. I've maneuvered my place in the line so I'll be the one to open them up to see what they have so that the contents can be organized and put away. The box has a big red cross in the right hand corner, with a white cross made of what looks like arrowheads with lions and unicorns in between the arms. It says _Kriegsgefangenenpost_ in the upper left corner. I don't know a lot of German, but I know what that means: Prisoner of War Mail. It also says Food Packets in both English and German. The top half of the package is in English: Prisoners' Parcels, British Red Cross and Order of St. John, War Organization. The bottom part is in French: _Comit_ _é_ _International Croix Rouge, Gen_ _ève Transit Suisse_. I guess the Red Cross is making sure anyone who's likely to come into contact with this box knows what it is and who it's for. There's a string knotted around it, extra insurance to make sure the contents stay inside.

I unknot the strings, careful to save them because you never know when they'll come in handy, and cut into the sealed box, opening it to pull out its contents. At least we can tell that these boxes haven't been pilfered, but who knows how many got taken out of the shipment. But that doesn't dim my excitement as I shout out what I've found at the top of this box: "Hey, we got canned meat!"

Newkirk, who's leaning over my shoulder, says, "Oi! _Tinned_ meat, if you please. This here's a British parcel, after all. And don't forget that these are British biscuits!" His eyes are twinkling, though, as he reaches around me to pull out the tin of "biscuits," tossing it in his hand. I laugh as I remember an earlier discussion on biscuits, crackers, and cookies. Just another of the language differences our resident Englishman loves pointing out to us Americans.

I resume pulling out "tins": good things to enrich soups and supplement dinners, like meat rolls, processed cheese, dried eggs, vegetables, and herrings; and things to make our bread more edible like margarine and strawberry preserves; and other goodies like sugar, tea, cocoa powder, condensed milk. Rations will still be short, I know, but there will be some occasional extras for us, a few more tasty bits now and then. I'm kinda puzzled by a can that says Peek Freans Apple Pudding, which doesn't look like any pudding I've had. Newkirk tries to explain, but describing cooking isn't his strong point and by the time he's done I'm still not sure what he means by pudding except that it will be sweet. Well, that's good enough. I run my fingers longingly over the package of soap, the can of cigarettes, and the bars of chocolate. A bar promising fruit and nuts with the chocolate catches my eye, but I pass it along with a sigh. All the cigarettes will be gathered to ration out to each of us, but the Colonel will insist on what he calls "the Schultz tax" on the chocolate: we have to have a store of bribes for when we need them.

Barnes gives me a big smile as he ferries the cans of sweet stuff over to the table where LeBeau and some of the other barracks cooks are sharing out supplies.

"D'you suppose if Red Cross packages are getting through that we'll start getting mail again? Letters, maybe even personal packages?" he asks hopefully. I know he's as eager to hear from his parents and sister as I am to hear from my mom and brother and Lillie. He was so happy to get that box of pecans from his folks last Thanksgiving.

Well, I don't think anyone can possibly be as eager to hear from parents as I am to get another letter from Lillie. I smile to myself remembering her last one, which I have tucked up safe in my coat pocket. Maybe Barnes is right and these Red Cross packages are a sign of more mail to come. This is a good day, and the war can't last forever. We're all pretty happy with what we're getting right now, though, and I'm smiling broadly as I reach for the next stack of brown paper packages tied up with string, to open them up and share them out with everyone.

ooOoo

 _Author's Note: The description of the Red Cross box (string included) is based on a photograph of one I found online; likewise, the contents are based on descriptions and pictures I found._


	6. Chapter 6: Carter

**Chapter 6: Carter**

Colonel Hogan's birthday is coming up and all the guys are arguing over how to throw him a party. Last year we didn't even know when his birthday was, until that General Biedenbender showed up and mentioned it in front of everybody during the inspection he was doing. But the Colonel's was that same day, and we had to get those two pilots back to England, plus blow up the Stuttheim refinery, so we didn't exactly have a chance to celebrate or anything. I think Colonel Hogan might even have been keeping us extra busy so we _couldn't_ do anything. He hadn't mentioned his birthday at all to anyone before that.

So when it was all over, when we'd bombed the refinery in the general's plane and parachuted out and gotten back to camp and everything, the Colonel's birthday was over. Newkirk provided a bottle of wine that he'd "nicked," as he says, from the Kommandant, and we toasted the Colonel's birthday with it, then he told us all to get to bed. The next day, the other guys and me decided that if we were still in camp the next year, we'd do something really nice for the Colonel's birthday. Of course, we were all hoping the war would be over by now, but I guess it's not surprising that it's not.

So here it is, almost a year later, and we're trying to figure out what to do. LeBeau suggested a bubble bath, but Newkirk, who's put himself in charge of arrangements, nixed it on account of us not having a bathtub and a bubble bath not fitting Colonel Hogan's dignity as a colonel. Kinch said that he'd be happy to have a long hot bubble bath for his birthday in a couple of months, if anyone was looking for ideas, and not to worry about _his_ dignity, but Newkirk wasn't paying attention. Olsen thought the Colonel would most like to have a girl to unwrap, and everyone agreed, but that's nearly as hard to arrange as a bathtub would be.

While they keep debating, I keep thinking of the birthday parties I had growing up. Boy, they were great! I'd look forward to mine all year. My mom always tried to make it special. She'd invite all the kids from the nearby farms and even school friends from in town to come to our farm. She'd make popcorn and cook a candy mixture, then have us kids butter our hands and we'd all help make enough caramel popcorn balls so each kid at the party could have one. She'd make a cake, and she'd be sure it had the right number of candles, of course. My favorites were orange cake or chocolate cake, always with two layers and lots of frosting in between them and on top. We'd play games, of course: musical chairs and pin the tail on the donkey inside if the weather wasn't good; capture the flag or green ghost in the graveyard outside if the weather was fine.

Best of all was a pony for the party. See, I always wanted a pony of my own, for keeps, but my dad was against it. We had a working farm, and he didn't have much use for animals that didn't work. We had dogs and cats and chickens, of course, and a couple of turkeys, but that was because they were all useful, though I had fun with them too. Chickens laid eggs, dogs protected the chickens, cats caught the vermin. Oh, and we ate the turkeys for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Dad said we didn't need a horse or mule: we were modern and had a tractor and a truck and a car. No need for plow animals any more, he said: he'd spent enough time looking at the back end of a mule when he was younger. And definitely no need for a pony, which couldn't earn its keep. So my mom, she'd get me a pony for one day a year, on my birthday. It'd have a saddle, so we could all ride it in turns, and a couple of years it even came with a little cart to pull that we could ride in.

So that pony was the best part of every birthday party. I can't help mentioning having a pony to the guys when they're talking about a birthday party for Colonel Hogan, but I can tell they think I'm crazy. And I guess Colonel Hogan is too big to ride a pony, but gosh, I'd still like to have one for his party. Ponies are so pretty and friendly, fun to feed carrots to and pet and lead around. But at least I can make sure we have a Pin the Tail on the Donkey set to play.

ooOoo

 _Some months later…_

I wake up and stare at the underside of Newkirk's bunk, a little disoriented. What was I just dreaming? Something about riding over the prairie at home . . . I can't remember. I hear a couple of guys already up, using the sink, and I blink, waking up more, and suddenly I remember. Today's my birthday!

I've barely hopped out of my bunk, grinning big, and suddenly Schultz is coming in the door, making sure everyone is awake and getting up for roll call. I get my boots on and shuffle over to the sink for my turn to wash my face. The guys are all grumping over the early morning, jostling each other like usual.

Nobody's mentioned my birthday yet.

Maybe they forgot.

I go back to my bunk, figuring I'll sit on the bench by the table till it's time to go outside, when suddenly I see a little cake sitting on the table with a candle in it. LeBeau's grinning at me, and his " _Bon_ _Anniversaire, André!_ " comes at almost the same moment Newkirk claps me on the shoulder and says, "Many happy returns of the day, Andrew!" and suddenly all the guys are patting my back and wishing me happy birthday. Even Colonel Hogan, who's come out of his office, smiles and shakes my hand and grabs my shoulder.

Suddenly Schultz bangs open the door, shouting out "Rrrrooolll callll!" that way he does. He sees my little cake and his eyes start gleaming as his hand reaches out.

LeBeau grabs it and pulls it to safety, scolding, " _Non!_ This is for André! It is his birthday, and I had only enough sugar to make it for him."

Schultz looks wistfully at my little cake, then he smiles at me. "A birthday! You are still young enough to enjoy having them, Carter! But," he turns to all the others, "it is time for roll call. You must all go outside!"

"Push Schultzie ahead of you," LeBeau whispers to the Colonel and Newkirk and Kinch and me, as we bend slightly to hear him. "I'll hide the cake where he can't find it and you can have it later," he promises me.

So we spill outside, herding Schultz in front of us, and we all line up like usual, and even though it's chilly I'm feeling warm inside. I know it won't be like a birthday at home, but I've got a cake, and I can pull out the Pin the Tail on the Donkey game from where I have it stashed. The guys won't admit it, but they had fun playing it at Colonel Hogan's party earlier this year.

After roll call, Kommandant Klink calls Colonel Hogan over to him, so we wait for them to finish talking before we go to the mess hall to get our breakfast. As we walk over, the Colonel tells us that he's agreed to Klink's request for a work detail on a local cabbage farm this afternoon.

Every single one of us groans out loud at this news. None of us likes farming work: it's hard on the back. And the knees. And thighs. And hands. And everything else. I thought I'd get away from farming by moving to Muncie to work in my uncle's pharmacy, but I've sure done my share of planting and hoeing and weeding and harvesting since I got here to Stalag 13. Not what I expected when I joined the Army Air Corps.

The Colonel shrugs apologetically. "Sorry, fellas, but Klink's been offered a share in the harvest, and quite frankly, we need it for this winter in case we're here till spring."

That's depressing. Ever since the invasion in June we've been hoping that we'll be liberated before winter and will be home for Christmas. Sounds like neither the Colonel nor the Kommandant expects that, though.

"Bad enough to be working in fields, but I hate cabbage," Newkirk grouses as we reach the mess hall and go inside.

"This from a man whose national cuisine includes 'bubble and squeak,'" the Colonel teases him as we get in line for our food.

"I'm more of a shepherd's pie or fish and chips man, meself," Newkirk answers back sharply. "Give me potatoes, not cabbage."

Greenberg's working the breakfast line and dumps a piece of black bread and a glop of wilted greyish cabbage on Newkirk's tin plate and hands it to him. Newkirk takes it and glares at him. I think he'd stand there longer, but LeBeau nudges him onwards. I agree privately that breakfast doesn't look great—I think it must be left from last night's dinner—but I remember the little cake that's waiting for me back in the barracks.

"We also need to check in with Little Boy Blue," the Colonel says, ignoring Newkirk's complaints as we sit down to eat. "He sent word last week he'd have the new schedule for the munitions trains by now; we need to pick it up and get it to London. Working on the cabbages will put us near his farm. Carter, it's your birthday: you can make contact with him and pick up the schedule." His eyes twinkle at me as I swallow down my mouthful of cabbage too quickly and start to cough.

"You got it, boy!" I manage to stammer out, between spasms as Kinch pounds my back then nudges me. "I mean, sir," I gasp, after sipping from the water LeBeau has passed to me.

My eyes are streaming, and I guess I don't look so competent, given how Newkirk rolls his eyes and says, "Are you sure, sir? Andrew here has trouble just trying to swallow his breakfast."

"I haven't seen you trying to down that cabbage on _your_ plate," Kinch says, defending me, which is nice of him, but that's just the kind of guy that Kinch is, you know?

"But this'll be a piece of pie," I protest. "Heck, it doesn't take much to walk over to a farm and pick up some information."

"Aside from remembering the code words, which may be more than someone can manage who can't remember the proper phrase is 'piece o' cake,'" Newkirk snorts.

"Well, I can do that," I say. "I mean, yeah, sometimes I'm not so good at memorizing words, especially poetry. See, my English teacher always had us try to memorize poems and you should have heard her reaction when I tried to recite 'The Charge of the Bright Brigade.' But that's poetry for ya. Now math and physics and chemistry, that's a lot easier, because formulas you can work out and they all add up. Hey Colonel, what if we suggest to Headquarters that they try giving out equations for recognition codes? An awful lot of the time the codes they give us don't make much sense, and we have to remember the other guy's answers, and really, it's confusing the way they sometimes they lead into conversations. . . ."

I trail off, because the Colonel is rubbing his forehead that way he does when he has a headache, and Kinch has covered his mouth with his hand, and LeBeau's shoulders are shaking, and Newkirk looks like he's about to explode, which he does.

"Andrew! They make the codes hard because they aren't supposed to be easy for the enemy to crack. And we don't want formulas that anyone can solve: they're supposed to be secret! And—"

"Pierre!" LeBeau grabs Newkirk's arm. Newkirk looks startled but realizes he's been getting a bit too loud. He lowers his voice to just grumbling, while I sit there silent and wonder if the Colonel's going to have me just work in the field now and not go make the contact.

But Colonel Hogan just shakes his head a little and gets up from the table, saying, "Come along, Carter. The sooner I give you the code words, the more time you'll have to get them memorized."

I break out in a big smile as I follow him. I'll have the whole morning during the trip to the farm and while we get started working in the fields to memorize them, once the Colonel tells me what they are.

ooOoo

I approach the farm carefully. We're lucky that the fields we're working in are bordered by woods, easy to sneak into once Schultz has nodded off for his mid-afternoon nap. Newkirk offered to come with me, to make sure I don't get lost. I'm not sure if he was just trying to get out of harvesting cabbage or looking out for me or didn't trust me, but I said there's nothing to walking through a wood and meeting an agent in a barn, and I repeated the code without a mistake, and the Colonel let me go on my own, which made me feel better.

I keep repeating the code to myself till I get to the edge of the woods and see the barn. I look around real carefully to make sure no one's around to see me, and then I sneak over to the door and slip inside. It's dim, but as my eyes adjust I see stalls, for horses. I hear one nicker and I go over—and it's a pony! And she has a baby—no, two little foals. Looks like they're maybe three or four months old. They're really pretty. The mama is gray shading to black on her head with black stockings, and a black dorsal strip; the babies are lighter, a kind of cream with dark manes and noses, and a little black star on each forehead. I stroke their foreheads and they nuzzle my hands. I'm wishing I had some kind of treat for them, when I remember the cabbage we've been harvesting. I have a few loose cabbage leaves that I'd stuck in my pockets real quick when we were teasing Schultz earlier, so I pull those out and feed them gently. They eat the leaves up, and gosh, I wish I had more for them.

Suddenly the barn door opens and I jump. There's an older man, a farmer by his clothes and pitchfork, and he's looking me over carefully. I think he's going to ask what I'm doing, but instead he says, " _Die klitzekleine Spinne Kroch in die Regenrinne_."

I stare at him, automatically translating in my head, _The tiny spider crept in the rain gutter_. "Oh! That's the code!" I say, realizing he must be Little Boy Blue. It's funny, because he is wearing a blue shirt and jacket. But he frowns, lifting his pitchfork. "No, it's just I've been saying it to myself in English!" I tell him, in German of course. "Because I thought it was really funny that we have a rhyme like that in our language. 'Eensy weensy spider,'" I add, saying the last bit in English.

I see that doesn't reassure him, and I realize I haven't said my part of the reply yet. " _Goldvogel, flieg aus, Flieg auf die Stangen_ ," I add quickly, and he lowers the pitchfork and smiles. The two parts of the code don't seem to fit together to me, but I guess if the recognition codes are nursery rhymes it's safer to have two unrelated rhymes, because if the second part was just the continuation of the first one then anyone could guess it.

He sets the pitchfork down and comes over to the stall, where I'm standing, then reaches past me to pat the mama pony's forehead. "You like ponies, eh? This is Motte, and her colts are Blümchen and Sternchen. Motte belongs to my daughter, Anja."

"I gave them each a cabbage leaf—I hope you don't mind," I confess.

"A little treat—no, I do not mind. But I must give you what you have come here for, and Motte, Blümchen, and Sternchen have been its guards. Come in here with me." He opens the stall and gently moves Motte and her two foals out of his way as he crosses over to the manger and I follow him. At his direction, we carefully lift it up and move it over about six inches, then he leans down to a small hole that we have uncovered to pull out a folded paper. "And here is the new train schedule for Papa Bear," he says. "You will take good care of it, _ja_?"

"Oh sure! I'll make sure Papa Bear gets it," I tell him, carefully tucking it into a secret pocket in my jacket that Newkirk made, where it can't get lost and isn't likely to get found if any of the guards decide to search me.

As we exit the stall, I can't help stopping to pet Motte and her babies again. The farmer smiles and says, "They are lucky for our family—twin foals are rare, and even more seldom do both survive. Fortunately they are Dülmen ponies, and eat mostly grass and hay, needing little grain, for there is not much grain for horses this year, and probably less next year." His face saddens momentarily, but Motte nuzzles him and he smiles again.

I can't help smiling either. I couldn't manage a pony for Colonel Hogan's birthday, but I got three for mine, even if only for a few minutes. And as Blümchen and Sternchen butt up against me, I know that from now on I'll always have a special soft spot for cream-colored ponies.

ooOoo

 _Author's Notes: Episodes referenced (in order): "Hogan Gives a Birthday Party," "Happy Birthday, Dear Hogan," and (very tangentially—see if you spot it) "Two Nazis for the Price of One."_

 _I found the German version of "Eensy Weensy Spider" on a nice website that had German nursery rhymes and English translations. I wasn't able to find much on the history of the rhyme, so I don't know if it was originally English and translated to German (or when that would have happened if so) or if there was an independent German version. It was handy for my purposes, though, so that's why I've used it. The "Goldvogel" rhyme is German from the same site; roughly translated the two lines I quote would go something like this: "Gold-bird, fly away, fly to your perch."_

 _Dülmen ponies are the only remaining native pony breed in Germany, though they aren't common. They come from an area north of Düsseldorf, so it shouldn't be too unreasonable for Carter to find some near Stalag 13. (Yes, I'm a Düsseldorfian! Though I respect the arguments of the Hammelburgians.) Dülmens have a reputation for being good ponies for children. Twins for any horse or pony breed are rare, but I did find an internet picture of twin Dülmen foals and their dam on which I based Motte, Sternchen, and Blümchen. (Motte means "moth," Sternchen means "little star," and Blümchen means "little flower," according to a website on popular German pet names.)_


	7. Chapter 7: Garlotti

**Chapter 7: Garlotti**

I bang through the barracks' door, hurrying to get outa the rain, and then stop dead in my tracks two steps in. LeBeau's wearing his _toque blanche_ (one bit of French all of us in Barracks 2 have learned—he's drilled it into us), and he looks up at me from the table, where he's got apples and flour and sugar and . . . oh _rats_ , he's making strudel again! His eyes light up when he sees me.

"Ah! Just who I need!"

 _No, no, no_. . . . Ever since the Colonel got my papa's recipe for pizza and LeBeau found out my family owns a pizzeria, he's decided that I should be his assistant chef here in Barracks 2. Once he found out my uncle Marco also has an Italian restaurant in Manhattan, that just sealed my fate. The fact I can't boil water without burning it doesn't make a difference to LeBeau. "You come from a restaurant family: cooking is in your blood!" he keeps insisting. But my mom isn't Italian, can't cook and doesn't have to, not with my papa in charge of the kitchen—she does the finances and the business side of the restaurant. I take after her side of the family in just about everything, including—and especially—the inability to cook.

I take a step backwards and run right into Colonel Hogan, who's also just dashed in out of the rain. "Ooops! Sorry, sir!" I apologize, but he waves it off, looking at LeBeau.

"You're starting the strudel? You'll have it ready in time to bribe Schultz tonight, right?"

" _Oui, Colonel, bien sûr_. I have Garlotti to assist me, after all," LeBeau answers brightly, smiling at me.

I open my mouth to protest I can't be much help, but Colonel Hogan claps me on the shoulder. "Good man!" he praises me, also smiling at me in that way he has that suggests he has complete confidence in my ability. "That's the kind of teamwork that keeps this war running smoothly!"

I grin weakly at him. "Ah, sure thing, Colonel." I give up in the face of his apparent faith in me and resign myself to my fate as I sit down at the table while the Colonel vanishes into his office.

"Don't worry," LeBeau reassures me, patting my shoulder in his turn. "A child could do this."

"Yeah, that's what Papa always said, right before I created a disaster," I answer glumly.

"Ah, but _I_ know how to train a _Sous-Chef de cuisine_ ," LeBeau says. "And you will do the prep work, not the actual cooking—but you will watch to see how it works."

I nod. No point in contradicting him by pointing out that watching Papa cook for twenty years hasn't made me able to cook Italian food yet.

"Here, you can peel the apples." He hands me a knife and two apples.

Well, at least that's something I can do. I'm good at whittling; peeling apples isn't so different.

Except as I cut into it, the first apple is very soft, the skin kind of wrinkly. "Uh, Louie? This is a pretty old apple."

The corners of LeBeau's mouth turn down slightly. "It is out of season; these are all I have left," he sighs. "No matter: once they are baked they will still taste fine. And it's not as if Schultz has the most discriminating palate," he mutters as he kneels down at the food locker that contains the extra supplies designated for bribes.

He pulls out a small package of raisins and another of walnuts to add to the pile of ingredients on the table. "Where is Newkirk?" he asks impatiently, as I carefully carve the apple skin off the apple with as little waste as possible and he sets about measuring flour and sugar.

Newkirk slips into the barracks a few moments later. "Where have you been?" LeBeau asks irritably. "And did you get what I sent you for?"

Newkirk's eyebrows shoot up. "I've been exactly where you told me to go," he snaps back. "It's thanks I should be getting, risking the cooler to nick your butter and egg from the Krauts' mess hall. Not to mention getting them back here without breaking that egg. You should be grateful." As he speaks, he pulls out a packet of butter and a real egg, setting them on the table.

" _Oui, oui_ , I am, I am," LeBeau answers, holding his hands up as a peace gesture. "Thanks to you I don't have to bake with dried egg. It never turns out right when I have to use that. I was just worried."

"About me or the egg?" Newkirk grumbles, but there's no edge to his voice now.

I look at the egg longingly. Jeez, how long's it been since I had one? My mouth waters as I remember fried eggs, scrambled eggs, poached eggs. . . . I guess the morning of the mission I was shot down on was the last time I got a real egg. Don't want to think about that—I look back down at the apple I'm just finishing and pick up the second one.

Newkirk sheds his great coat, hops onto the footlocker in front of his bunk and hoists himself up backwards to sit on top, looking down at us for a moment before he flops down, leaning on his right elbow and resting his head on his hand. He can watch the proceedings in safety from there. Wish I could do the same. I finish skinning the second apple.

"Now core and chop them," LeBeau orders me, as he busies himself measuring and mixing ingredients. By the time I'm done, he has a ball of dough and is rolling it out, thin as can be, on the wood cutting board.

Chopping finished, I'm take the apple peels over to the trash, when suddenly I find an irate Frenchman standing between me and the container.

" _Non, non!_ What are you doing?!" LeBeau asks, frowning at me, his hands held up in front of him, still covered with flour.

"Cleaning up?" My voice goes up too high, and I clear my throat.

"They are lovely peels: we won't waste them. Put them in the pot on the stove and run water over them. We will have a nice tea after a while."

"Tell you what, mate—you may have apple-flavored hot water, but it _won't_ be _tea_!" Newkirk declares from his perch.

LeBeau rolls his eyes. "A tisane, then. I think you use that word in English also?"

"Wouldn't know, since what I drink is proper tea," Newkirk answers promptly as he shakes his head, looking down in mock sorrow at LeBeau, apparently grieved by his friend's ignorance.

I don't get involved in their argument. No point to that. I just do what LeBeau tells me, wondering if I can get away now. It's not raining that hard—maybe I could get over to the rec hall. But Louie, ignoring Newkirk magnificently, has other plans for me.

"Now, you can prepare the filling while I stretch the dough," he says briskly to me. I gulp, but in just a moment he has me seated back at the table, cutting a toasted piece of saved white bread into crumbs, while he rolls out and stretches the dough thinner and thinner. At least I don't have to do that.

While I reduce the toasted white bread to crumbs, I wonder who went without it for this recipe. LeBeau? I wouldn't put it past him, so that he can have the right ingredients for any dish he makes, even if it's just for Schultz. But maybe it was Colonel Hogan's: when he gets an invitation to eat dinner with the Kommandant, like he did a couple of days ago, he usually lets us share out his rationed meal.

Next LeBeau directs me to melt some of the butter that's left in a pan on the stove, mix the crumbs in it, and sauté them. LeBeau keeps on working the dough, thinning it down to the impossible dimensions of cardboard. "Keep stirring," he commands me when I forget what I'm doing while watching him. "Don't let them burn!"

It seems to me I'm now doing actual cooking, not just the prep work he promised me, but I keep my mouth shut and keep stirring the breadcrumbs and manage not to burn them.

When he's satisfied with the dough, he comes over and sniffs the breadcrumbs. Satisfied again, he directs me to bring the pan to the table. We combine the chopped apples with sugar, raisins, walnuts, cinnamon, and half the bread crumbs in a bowl, adding more butter to the mixture. LeBeau puts the apple filling on the dough, in a long narrow strip, then gently brushes melted butter onto the rest of the dough and sprinkles the remaining bread crumbs over it. Carefully, he lifts the dough's papery edge and rolls it evenly. It's amazing how he can lift that thin dough without tearing it. Eventually the strudel is a little pastry log, which LeBeau puts, seam side down, onto a buttered pan. Then carefully he lifts it into our Dutch oven, which he uses for baking with our wood stove.

"Where'd you learn to bake without a real oven?" I ask him.

"'Real' oven? You mean gas or electric? _Ma grand-maman_ ," he answers, adjusting it the way he wants it, while I guess that the French words mean grandmother. "She never trusted gas or electric ovens, used the same wood stove as her own mother. She used to let me help her in the kitchen when I was a young boy. Ah! She was the best cook! And a good teacher!"

"You are too," I say, kinda unwillingly because I don't want him to keep asking me to help cook. But he's trying to be so nice to me.

" _Merci beaucoup_ ," he says to me with a little bow, no less. "I could not have gotten the strudel done without your help."

I'm sure he could have, and could have done better, but I just shrug and say, "Sure. Glad to help out," because what else can I say? I don't add anything about asking me again, though. I'm just glad to be done without having ruined the strudel this time.

I hop up on my bunk, safe from being drafted to cook any more. But now comes my least favorite part of the process. As the strudel bakes, the wonderful aroma of hot apple, sugar, and pastry percolates through our barracks. It smells even better than real coffee.

I sigh. The scent of baking apples reminds me so much of Papa's apple crostata, the dessert special he makes in the restaurant every fall. He always says to me, "I am from the old country, but you, _figlio mio_ —you are as American as apple pie, but do not forget you are also still as Italian as _crostata di mele_." As I remember him saying that, I swallow hard.

No crostata here, or apple pie either. Just a crisp apple strudel that all of us want but none of us will get to eat, because it's all for Schultz.

ooOoo

 _Author's Notes: 1) Episode referenced: "The Pizza Parlor." 2) You can make apple peel tisane (a lovely fall drink) as describe—though be sure that the apples are organic if you do, since the peels of non-organic apples are where the pesticides are concentrated. Add spices if you like (cinnamon stick, cloves, or cardamom) and simmer for 5-10 minutes on the stove. 3) Translations: "Oui, Colonel, bien sûr" = Yes, Colonel, of course (French); "Ma grand-maman" = my grandmother (affectionate term; French); "figlio mio" = my son, and "crostata di mele" = apple pie/tart (Italian)._


	8. Chapter 8: Pike

**Chapter 8: Pike**

There's so many things I miss about home, and just about as many that I don't like about Stalag 13. 'Course, there's a huge difference between living in my family's Victorian house in Smithfield, Virginia, and a wood hut in a German POW camp. I have two lists going in my head: things I hate and things I miss. Lot of the time the two are tied together, with one thing I hate here reminding me of something I miss from home.

One of the things that's been driving me craziest here is the way Schultz slams into our barracks every day, morning and evening and sometimes late at night, to announce roll call in that bellow of his. I swear he's like to wake the dead—except that sometimes we're all so dead tired that he doesn't actually wake us. So if we're napping, or still asleep, he bangs on our bunks to get us up! It's this loud hard smack that sounds like a gun going off by your head and shakes the whole bunk, at least if you're on the upper level, like I am. Newkirk and Carter have it worst, their bunks being so close to the door, and handy, as you might say, for Schultz to bang on. He doesn't do it to my bunk as often, but it drives me up a wall when he does.

I also just hate in general how Schultz and the other guards can just bust into our barracks any time of day or night. 'Course, if we've got an operation going on—anyone down in the tunnel or out of camp or working on materials—one or more of us is always on watch. I get that job a lot, which is usually fine by me. I want to help out, like we all do, but I'm not sure I have the nerve to do the kind of stuff that Kinch and Newkirk and LeBeau and Carter do all the time, going out on sabotage missions and rescuing downed Allied airmen and risking their necks each time they leave camp. I don't speak enough German to be useful that way anyway, though I'm getting better at it since the Colonel insists that we all practice it. Kinch says no German would believe my accent, though.

Anyway, often when Schultz barges in, I think longingly of my home back in Smithfield. My dad owns one of the big Victorian houses up on the hill on Church Street, with two main floors plus a cellar and a big attic: ten rooms, all with high ceilings. My bedroom at the back overlooked the Pagan River's marshes from the second floor. Whenever I let myself think of home these days, I usually remember how the river looked either on cloudy days, with the water a polished pewter under a silver sky, or on a clear evening with the sunset shining gold light level across the cattails, cordgrass, and switchgrass, gilding the water in between them, or a little later in the evening, after the sun has set and the sky is darkening to a sapphire blue but with the water still somehow glowing so that there's more light in the water than in the sky. Prettiest sight you ever did see.

Mother always said that moonlight and sunlight on the water were the most important silver and gold we had. Looking at it here and now, I admit that's still true. Okay, I know I grew up better off than most of the guys here in the barracks—well, okay, a _lot_ richer than most, but I keep that to myself around here. Of course there's no shame in growing up poor, and given the Depression a lot of people did. Wasn't anyone's fault; just hard times. I know that was so for some good friends I have here. In fact, I know a couple guys here who grew up pretty rough and think Stalag 13 isn't that much worse than some places where they grew up, in some respects anyway.

But that's not how I feel.

When I look at these here coarse wood walls with no plaster to smooth them over and keep out the wind, or when I feel cramped on my bunk, which is the only tiny space I have to call my own in this one room I share with thirteen other guys, or when I have to use the rough group latrines or the cold showers with all the other guys, or especially when Schultz slams in here without warning, I miss the quiet, spacious, gracious house I grew up in, where no one who wasn't part of the family came into the house without ringing the bell that chimed four notes of the Westminster Quarters.

Who would have ever thought that one of the things from home I'd miss most would be doorbells?

ooOoo

 _Author's Note: Pike is an original character who makes brief appearances in two of my stories: "Swapping Generals" (chapter 8) and "Giving Thanks."_


	9. Chapter 9: Olsen

**Chapter 9: Olsen**

I lift and toss another shovel of snow, then stop to arch backwards and stretch my back, shake my shoulders. Uff-da, that feels good.

I shouldn't complain, since I don't get tapped for this kind of duty often: Colonel Hogan has other uses for me since I can speak German like a native. I spend a lot of time outside camp scouting information to send to Headquarters. But with the winter cold settling in, the colonel has kept me back in camp, a decision which, unfortunately for me, means I'm now available for work details like this one.

We've been digging out this road for several hours now. I've moved so much snow that I'm just beat. Everyone's tired—except maybe Colonel Hogan who, as an officer, hasn't been working of course, just supervising us enlisted. I glance over at the colonel, where he's standing, hands in his jacket pockets, idly talking with Schultz. He's wrapped his neck against the cold with the white muffler Hilda knitted for his birthday, tucking the ends down inside his jacket for whatever extra warmth they can give. He rocks back and forth, shifting his feet so he won't get froze up. Given how cold it is, I bet I'm a lot warmer from working so hard than he is from just standing around. There's that to be said for shoveling a whole slurge of snow, as far as that goes.

Davis catches my glance at the colonel. "He making sure you're working hard enough?" he asks sarcastically.

I shake my head. "I don't think he'll mind if we leave it go for a moment. I was wondering how cold he is, don't'cha know."

"He volunteered us for this detail," Davis grumbles. "If he's cold, it's his fault."

"Colonel Hogan didn't have to come with," I point out. "He knows we're safe with Schultz as our guard, eh." Davis nods reluctant agreement: we all know that big lug would never abuse us. "The Colonel could've stayed in the barracks, warm by the stove," I add, because Davis sometimes needs to be reminded of the Colonel's good points as an officer. Since Colonel Hogan volunteered us for this here job, some deal he made with Klink—I didn't hear the details—it's to his credit he came with too, especially if it means he winds up standing around for hours in the freezing weather.

Barnes is just down from us, and seeing me and Davis take a break and a stretch, he follows suit. It's catching: LeBeau and Newkirk do the same on my other side, as do Chapman and Greenberg and Pike—pretty much the whole crew eventually. It's quieter now that we're resting, and I can hear the wind blowing through the trees. There's something else too, a faint noise off in the distance, hard to hear but somehow familiar. It's rhythmic, and sort of musical . . . I know this sound—sleigh bells? Sounds like the ones that Farfar, my dad's father, used to have for his cutter back home on his Minnesota farm.

A wave of memory hits me: sitting in Farfar's small cutter with my little sister, both of us wrapped in layers of blankets over our winter coats and scarves and mittens and caps, which were in turn layered over Farmor's hand-knitted good wool sweaters. Kept us warm enough. The cutter was a small sleigh, black with red runners, a two seater with deep red upholstery that just barely fit both Farfar and the two of us, and that only because Lisa and I were both still small. The sky overhead was bigger than it is here in Germany: it reached from horizon to horizon, unbroken by trees, just white fields and prairie and that clear deep blue arched above us with the low-set winter sun glinting off the wind-swept snow all around us. I miss that big unbroken sky. I remember how I drew that cold dry air into my lungs and breathed it out warm and moist against the wool of my muffler, as I kept my eyes on the horse, Nils. He was dark brown against the snow and easier on my eyes than the blinding whiteness around us. The sleigh bells rang each time his hoofs hit the frozen ground under the snow, _jingle, jingle, jingle_ , so I knew we were on earth, but the cutter moved so fast it felt like we were flying over the snow. I could just about believe that Santa's sleigh could fly through the air, wondering if ours was about to.

I jerk out of the memory, the sound of the past still with me in my head but growing louder in the present. A small sleigh pulls into view around the curve of the road. It has a high curved front, designed to keep the snow off the driver, and its oak-brown form, rounded like a sea shell and sitting atop lacework runners, is drawn by a gray pony and driven by a young woman. She's a true snow maiden, like she stepped out of the fairy tales Oma used to tell on winter nights: pure blonde, golden hair under a blue cap, wearing a blue coat that shows off her pale complexion. I'll bet her eyes are blue and that she wears the blue coat and cap to make the most of them.

One of Hitler's pure Aryans, I can't help thinking bitterly.

She pulls the pony to a halt as Schultz and Colonel Hogan come up to her. I swear I can see the colonel flip his "charm the ladies" switch to "on" as he tips his hat to her.

He's not the only one. All the guys on the detail are staring.

"Isn't she pretty," Carter sighs.

" _Oui_ ," LeBeau breathes out, captivated.

"Charmin' as a daisy," Newkirk agrees, "and hair as gold as a sovereign."

Carter looks at him, puzzled. "She's a gray, not a palomino."

"Oh for the love of— Andrew! Are you talking about the _horse_?"

"Well, sure. But really, she's a pony, not a horse, a Dülmen pony, in fact. Say, did you know that's a German breed? I saw her on my birthday, when we were harvesting the cabbages and Colonel Hogan had me go get the train schedule from the underground, remember? Her name's Motte, and she's got two foals, both cream colored, and—"

"Carter!" LeBeau interrupts. "Forget about the pony! What about the _girl_? What's _her_ name?"

"I don't remember," Carter answers vaguely. "She wasn't there. I don't think Little Boy Blue said her name. Or maybe he did. Was it Ada? Or maybe Elsa?" He's still looking at the pony.

I'm grinning, because now I know who she is. I haven't met her before, but I've met Little Boy Blue a couple of times to pick up intel from him. I don't think LeBeau or Newkirk would want to tangle with Anja's father, for sure. He wields a mean pitchfork.

Colonel Hogan glances over to us and I see him make the hand sign for us to distract Schultz.

"Oi, that's the ticket," rejoices Newkirk, recognizing the signal the same moment I do and immediately bolting for the sleigh, LeBeau hard on his heels. Barnes and Davis and Greenberg and Chapman aren't far behind. Carter's in the pack too, though he's angling a little differently, and I realize he's going for Motte the pony. That figures.

Seeing the whole detail come charging towards the sleigh makes Motte dance nervously, and Anja has to pull back on the reins to hold her. "Sergeant!" she snaps to Schultz. "Do something about those prisoners! They're scaring my pony!"

Schultz immediately steps forward to us, his arms outstretched as if that will hold us back. "What are you doing?!" he shouts. "Back to your shovels! Back to work! Back, back, back, back, back, back, back! We must get the road clear!"

The moment his back is turned, Anja whips out an envelope from under the blanket that covers her lap and hands it to Colonel Hogan. He unzips his jacket, stuffing it into an inner pocket, then rezips hastily, probably motivated almost as much by the cold as by the need for secrecy.

Schultz herds us backwards, clearly in a temper at having his conversation with the lovely young lady interrupted. The guys all respond with protests to him and catcalls to her, which Colonel Hogan puts a stop to immediately.

"That's enough, _gentlemen_! No bothering the young lady!"

She sits up straighter and gives the colonel a little smile for his chivalry as everyone obeys the implicit order. With a little cluck to Motte and a shake of the reins, she's on her way, passing close enough to us that we suddenly realize that she's younger than we thought: maybe sixteen. Maybe. Maybe more like fifteen?

Schultz looks at us, every inch a disapproving father-figure. "A nice little girl like that, and you boys acting so badly. _Ach_ , I'm ashamed of you!"

"Robbing the cradle, that'd be." Newkirk shakes his head in sorrowful agreement.

"But in a couple of years. . ." LeBeau suggests dreamily.

"In a couple of years the war will be over and we'll all be a long way from here," Colonel Hogan says, joining us and shaking his head at us. "Leave the kid alone."

We all nod, watching as the fairy-tale sleigh and its snow princess disappear in the distance, sleigh bells ringing.

ooOoo

Author's Note: In "Happy Birthday, Dear Hogan," Kinch says Hilda is knitting a muffler for Colonel Hogan's birthday, so here he is wearing it.

Language issues: _Farfar_ and _Farmor_ are Swedish names for grandparents: unlike English, Swedish specifies which grandparent is which. _Farfar_ is father's father; _Farmor_ is father's mother. (Likewise, _Morfar_ is mother's father, and _Mormor_ is mother's mother. Much clearer than English!) _Oma_ is the informal German name for grandmother: I'm imagining Olsen with a Norwegian grandfather and a Swedish grandmother on his father's side (given the spelling of his last name) and a German-American mother (to explain his fluent German as Hogan's outside man). I've also sprinkled some Minnesota dialectal words and phrases throughout his musings, most of which I heard when I was in college in Minnesota (which does have a distinctive accent and dialect). See Book'em Again's wonderful story "Uff Da" for North Dakotan Carter's use of that common exclamation.

Oh, and when Newkirk refers to a "sovereign," he's talking about a British gold coin, not a king or queen.


	10. Chapter 10: Greenberg

**Chapter 10: Greenberg**

" _Wienar_ schnitzel?!"

LeBeau's voice is loaded with outrage, but I can't tell if it's because Colonel Hogan has asked him to cook for the Germans . . . or if it's because of what he's been asked to cook.

"That's right." Colonel Hogan's voice is half patient, half coaxing. This is somewhat surprising, given that LeBeau just stepped right up in his face to object to the Colonel's assignment. "With Spätzle," the Colonel adds calmly.

He must really want this. I mean, he could just order LeBeau to do it, but that doesn't always produce the best kitchen results. Last time LeBeau broke one of Klink's antique serving dishes. He told Klink he dropped it by accident. "Accident," my foot. I saw him smash it. It wasn't the only time he's done it, either. The Colonel had a lot to do to soothe Klink after that incident, so this time he's trying persuasion first with LeBeau, wanting to protect Klink's crockery I expect. I wonder what the mission is this time.

LeBeau takes a step back and folds his arms, looking up at the Colonel. This is not a sign of submission or agreement. "And where am I supposed to get _veal_? I guarantee you that the Bosche mess hall won't have any."

The Colonel shrugs. "Send Schultz to town to the grocer there. Or the black market if need be."

"And I am supposed to trust _Schultz_ to pick out meat—assuming there is any?"

"Fine. I'll tell Klink you need to go do it yourself, with Schultz as your guard." There's a slight edge to the Colonel's voice, and he's just pushed his cap back. I can tell he's getting annoyed. I wonder if LeBeau will pick up on that too. "Look, Klink's got a guest from Stuttgart, who's got some papers on train schedules that we need. Herr Bauer wants wiener schnitzel, Klink wants to impress him, I want Bauer's papers; we need that dinner to make it all happen."

LeBeau takes a deep breath, then releases it as a sigh. " _D'accord_. I will do it."

" _Without_ breaking any of Klink's dishes," the Colonel adds in emphasis.

LeBeau grins kind of sheepishly. "I promise. I will keep the dishes whole, as long as I do not have to wash them up." He looks meaningfully around at the rest of us who've been watching the exchange between us.

So, which of us will get drafted to do that, I wonder. The Colonel may sweet talk LeBeau to a point, coddling the artistic side of LeBeau's skill as needed, but he'll just order one or two of us to do clean up, like he told me to do it that time LeBeau broke Klink's dish. The joys of being in the Army…

Well, at least it's better than doing dishes in the mess hall.

ooOoo

"No veal, no Wienerschnitzel," LeBeau announces, sweeping his hands down and outward dramatically.

Schultz has just walked into the barracks, returning from Hammelburg with a mournful expression on his face that LeBeau has read correctly. LeBeau didn't get to go into town with him after all: the Colonel is fuming over losing his touch with Klink, who insisted Schultz could handle the necessary shopping. It didn't matter all that much; I think it's the principle of not having won his game that bothers the Colonel. But now Schultz has struck out.

"I know," Schultz answers sadly. "But there is not a cutlet of veal to be had in all Hammelburg, Cockroach. I thought," he hesitates for a moment, "perhaps a Schweineschnitzel would do—"

LeBeau's eyes go steely.

"But there was no pork either," Schultz finishes with a sigh.

"Hey LeBeau, what exactly is a wiener schnitzel?" Carter is sitting at the table playing Go Fish with Barnes and Davis, having talked both of them into playing his favorite card game (which Newkirk refuses to admit even exists). Apparently Carter's losing interest in his current hand of cards, not surprising given that he doesn't have even two of anything, which I can see from my present spot on my bunk.

Schultz answers instead of LeBeau, though. " _Ach_ , it is soo good!" His eyes roll and his hands clasp together over his broad stomach, apparently in ecstasy over the idea of the schnitzel. "You take a piece of veal and pound it thin, so it is very tender," he narrows his thumb and forefinger to maybe a half inch, "then roll it in eggs and bread it in the finest bread crumbs," he draws his finger in circles, "then fry it until it is perfectly crisp and _wun-der-bar_!" He closes his eyes, apparently overcome by the mere thought of such a dish. I can't help snickering, but I can hear I'm not the only one doing it.

"Sounds just like how my papa makes his Cotoletta Milanese," Garlotti remarks incautiously.

LeBeau's face brightens. "You know how to fix it?"

"No! Never really paid attention," Garlotti backpedals as fast as he can, while I snort into my fist. It's becoming a standing joke in our barracks how LeBeau keeps trying to recruit Garlotti as his _sous-chef_ , and how Garlotti keeps trying to avoid helping LeBeau with the cooking.

Barnes takes pity on Garlotti, apparently, stepping in by saying, "Actually, it sounds a lot like my Ma's chicken-fried steak. Best there is in Oklahoma!"

"Or my grandmother's chicken schnitzel," I add. I'm careful not to refer to her as my bubbe: Colonel Hogan and I agreed in my internment interview that I need to avoid using any Yiddish words when Germans are around, even Schultz. In fact, I'm careful to avoid it even just around my buddies here in the barracks so I don't get in bad habits. Colonel Hogan has made sure that my file, and those of the few other Jewish POWs in camp, don't contain references to our religious and ethnic background that could create problems if someone came looking for trouble—and to be fair, Kommandant Klink doesn't seem interested in that part of Nazi ideology. We've all made the "H" that identifies us as Jewish on our dog-tags illegible. So I'm not telling anyone why my bubbe knew how to make chicken schnitzel, but it does sound like LeBeau needs a hand if he's going to help Colonel Hogan make sure Klink pleases this Bauer guy.

"You think you could get chicken?" I add, as LeBeau and Schultz turn to me. Actually, at this point _all_ the guys in the barracks are looking at me.

LeBeau whips back around to Schultz, who is nodding his big head slowly. " _Ja_ ," Schultz says, "fresh chickens were delivered to the mess just this morning from Huber's farm. The Kommandant was going to have one roasted for dinner on Sunday."

LeBeau grabs his hat and his scarf. "He'll have to share one with his guest tonight if he wants to impress him. Schultzie, we are going to inspect those chickens! I will choose the best one for tonight's meal." He looks over at me. "And you, Greenberg, will be helping me in the kitchen. You remember your grandmother's recipe?"

"Sure," I nod. "I watched her make it lots of times, even helped her because there weren't any girls in our family—not at that point. She always cut a little extra piece of the meat to fry up and give me a taste before dinner." I smile, remembering how she'd lean down and pat my cheek, a gentle light touch, just as she set my little schnitzel down on a little saucer for me to snack on while she finished up the dinner.

" _Bien_. You will help me make them, and I shall follow your grandmother's example and give you the first sample, to make sure it is coming out right." LeBeau follows Schultz to the doorway, then stops. "Have you made Spätzle before too?"

"Sure." I nod again and grin. I may still wind up washing dishes, but I'll bet I'll get some good food beforehand, even some that will taste like home.

"I shall make you my assistant!" LeBeau smiles and closes the door behind him.

Garlotti makes a show of wiping his brow. "Better you than me!" he laughs at me.

I chuckle too. "I spend all that time training to be a gunner, and it turns out my granny's recipes are my best contribution to the war effort now. Chicken schnitzel and Spätzle!"

"What the heck is Spätzle?" Carter asks me, looking up at me from the table.

"Egg noodles," I tell him. "It's schnitzel with noodles!"

ooOoo

 _Author's Note: Breaded and pan-fried veal, beef, pork, and chicken seem to be staples in many countries' cuisine, from Germany to Italy to Mexico. The dish is called a schnitzel by German-speaking peoples, which would include Yiddish spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. "Wienar schnitzel" has come to mean a veal schnitzel in Austria and Germany: the name means it is supposedly from the city of Wien in Austria (anglicized as Vienna), although there's no evidence for a specifically Viennese origin. "Schweineschnitzel" is made from pork, as the first syllable suggests even to English speakers (schwein / swine / pigs). It is also called "Wiener Schnitzel vom Schwein" (Viennese schnitzel from pork). Chicken-fried steak in the American South is indeed a gastronomic relative of both the German schnitzel and the Italian version of the dish that Garlotti mentions, Cotoletta Milanese (sometimes called cotoletta alla Milanese). Chicken schnitzel is highly popular in Israel where it is often made as part of a kosher meal. Spätzle is one of several customary accompaniments to schnitzel: gravy-covered egg noodles, which are_ _traditionally especially popular in the Baden-Württemberg region of southwest Germany. Thus I have made Herr Bauer from Stuttgart, which is in that region and was also an important railroad hub: Klink wants to impress him by giving him a taste of home._

 _Greenberg appears as a minor POW character in "Will the Real Adolf Please Stand Up?": he's one of the three POWs dressing as German officers. I know I'm not the first HH writer to make Greenberg Jewish: Snooky uses him that way in her story "He Who Saves a Single Life" and there may be some others as well. Most American Jews captured by the Luftwaffe weren't treated differently than other POWs, although there were some horrible exceptions. As for Greenberg's comment about his dog-tags, this was one option for Jewish soldiers captured by the Nazis. Some opted to have no religious preference stamped on their dog-tags if fighting in Europe; some discarded their dog-tags prior to capture; some had a different religious preference stamped on their tag, an outsized "P" that the Allies knew meant the bearer was Jewish rather than Protestant. I've opted to make Hogan aware of Greenberg's background, so (since Hogan would obviously know about Nazi racial ideology and have at least general knowledge of the oppression of Jews in Germany and occupied countries) he takes what steps he can to try to protect the Jewish members of his command._

 _Although the timing of putting up this chapter is accidental, I would still like to wish any of my Jewish readers a happy Chanukah since the holiday began yesterday evening (Dec. 6)._


	11. Chapter 11: Hogan

**Chapter 11: Hogan**

You know that spot just to the left of the nape of the neck, right above the shoulder blade? That's where I'm itching. But I don't dare scratch it, even though it's making me miserable.

A lot less miserable than being shot would be, I remind myself for the umpteenth time, concentrating on keeping still as a statue, breathing as lightly as possible.

That's relatively easy (except for the itch), since I'm lying on my belly here in the woods. I can feel Kinch next to me, can even feel the heat radiating from his body he's so close to me, but I don't dare turn my head to look at him for fear of making a noise.

We don't want that Luftwaffe soldier twenty feet from us to hear us and figure out we're here.

The moon is full and bright tonight: a perfect bomber's moon for pilots. Perfect for us too, bombers without a plane: we just planted bombs on a railroad track, timed to explode when the weekly munitions train comes through.

Fortunately, however, despite the bright light, the two of us are in the moon shadow of some trees, with a bush in front of us. Kinch is better hidden than I am, or better camouflaged might be the way to put it, dark in the dark night. I'm hoping the black grease on my face is doing its job.

That blasted soldier hasn't moved in ten minutes. What the hell is he waiting for? What's he even doing out here at this time of night? Star gazing?

We need to get back to camp: I sent Carter, Newkirk, and LeBeau back while Kinch and I detoured to pick up convoy information from one of our informants. If we're late, the three of them will get worried, and I don't want them coming back outside the wire looking for us. But we're stuck here until this guard moves on, and I'm hoping he doesn't have any buddies who are about to show up.

He really does seem to be star gazing. He's certainly not looking around him, which is foolish. Believe me, if I was his CO and caught him doing that, I'd be chewing him out for not keeping a better eye out while on sentry duty—whatever it is he's supposed to be guarding or keeping an eye out for out here in the woods. Of course, given that he's an enemy soldier, I'm grateful that he's so careless.

He takes out a cigarette and lights it. Great—just great. I guess he's in no hurry. And apparently he's not worried about giving his location away. Between the lights of the match and the cigarette, not to mention the smell of tobacco, anyone nearby would know he's here.

Somehow the scent of the smoke makes my itch worse. I grit my teeth and concentrate on ignoring it.

 _Honk! Honk!_ Suddenly, I hear the sound of geese flying above us.

It's a familiar sound to me. The Canada geese always migrate past Bridgeport, where I grew up. My dad's not a hunter, nor am I: fishing is more our line. But growing up I still always looked for the geese flying south in the fall and north in the spring as a sign of the change of seasons. Whenever I heard them, I could never resist looking up, wanting to be up in the air like them, flying off to distant places like they did.

I still feel that tug strongly enough that I lift my head just a fraction before I realize what I'm doing. I freeze again, but still raise my eyes and I'm rewarded by seeing part of the flock above us through the gaps in the trees, lit by the bright full moon. They're some kind of gray geese, native to this part of the world, I suppose: stockier than the Canada geese I knew as a boy and missing their long, nearly swan-like necks, but still beautiful in the moonlit night air. The honks and whir of wings sound similar if not the same—and they still stir that old feeling of longing deep in my chest as I catch a glimpse of the flock flying above me in the moonlight, netted by the tree branches.

Like me, the German soldier can't resist looking up either. As I dart a glance over at him, I see that the cigarette now dangles carelessly from his fingers, his whole attention on the midnight blue sky above him and the silvered geese speeding past us.

Suddenly he speaks. " _Wildgänse rauschen durch die Nacht_."

I initially tense at the sound, trying to hear whoever he's speaking to, then his tone and the words sink in. His voice is soft and meditative. He's talking to himself, not someone else, and he's quoting poetry—well, the title of a poem, "Wild Geese Rush through the Night."

It's one I actually know, that I remember reading in a class years ago. Can't think of the author's name right now, but the poem always stuck with me. I remember it was written by a soldier back during World War I. It was soon after put to music, which I didn't know when I first read it. Ever since then, it's been a hiking song favored by German youth groups and soldiers. I've heard it a couple times. The tune didn't seem to fit the words: very martial music, good for marching in that very German way. The words seem sad to me, though, spoken by a soldier seeing the geese flying north and warning them to be careful in a violent world full of death. He sees them as gray soldiers, like himself, their honking a kind of battle cry, and he wonders whether, when they fly south again, he and his fellow soldiers will still be alive. He finishes the poem by asking the geese to say "amen" for himself and his comrades when they return in the fall.

When I first read it years ago, it seemed like a protest against the Great War, gentler than Wilfred Own or Siegfried Sassoon's work, but still mourning near inevitable death in the trenches. But naturally that romantic ideal of dying for the Fatherland appealed to the damned Nazis, who picked the song up as yet another tool to help brainwash all the kids in the Hitler Youth. Though maybe kids always see dying young as romantic, like Romeo and Juliet. And is that song really all that different from Rupert Brooke's romanticized war poems? Not that _he_ ever found out what war is _really_ like.

I break out of my musings when this German soldier moves again, raising his cigarette, inhaling, then blowing the smoke out of his mouth, the little cloud blue in the moonlight. I can't help thinking it's odd that he said the words like the poem they first were, not the song lyrics they became. Like the words mean what their writer probably first meant, not what they've come to mean.

The geese have passed over us, their noise grown faint. The soldier throws down the butt of his cigarette, grinds out the glowing stub with his boot heel, then puts his rifle back over his shoulder, and wanders off in the direction we just came from, still looking meditatively up at the sky.

Kinch and I wait still, quiet and easy now, for another five minutes, just to be on the safe side. The itch on my shoulder has disappeared, I notice.

Finally I rise to my feet, silently matched by Kinch. We step cautiously back onto the path, still listening carefully, but all we hear is the silence of the woods.

I tap Kinch on the shoulder and point the direction we need to go. In the moonlight, I see him nod his understanding. Wordlessly, the two of us head back to camp, cautiously listening for more patrols as we go. In the back of my mind, though, the wild geese still call, flying with the moon on their wings, and I wonder how many soldiers alive today they'll be saying "amen" for when they return next spring.

ooOoo

 _Author's Note: "Wildgänse rauschen durch die Nacht" (Wild geese rush through the night) is a poem written by Walter Flex, a German soldier during World War I. It was published as a part of his novel_ _Der Wanderer zwischen beiden Welten_ _(The wanderer between both worlds) in 1916, and republished separately in a volume of Flex's poetry in 1917, the year he died (aged 30) on Germany's eastern front. In the novel, the narrator (a soldier) writes the poem upon hearing a flock of wild graylag geese flying above him while on watch at night. The poem was set to music by Robert Götz in 1917 and became a popular walking/hiking song for German youth in the Wandervogel movement of the 1920s and early '30s. The Nazis replaced such groups with the Hitler Youth, of course, but Flex's poem with Götz's tune remained popular because it fit well enough into Nazi ideology. The poem can be read in the original German or in English translation on Wikipedia if you look up "Wild Geese (Song)."_

 _As for the other writers Hogan mentions, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon are the two best-known English war poets of the Western Front in World War I, both protesting in their poetry the slaughter of their generation. Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" is one of the most famous anti-war poems ever written, not sparing readers the horror of trench warfare. (It's short and available on the internet: if you haven't read it, you should.) Owen was killed in action exactly a week (almost to the hour) before the Armistice in 1918; in a horribly sad irony, his mother received the telegram informing her of her son's death on Armistice Day itself, November 11, 1918, while the church bells were ringing to celebrate the start of the beginning of the peace. Rupert Brooke is the antithesis of Owen and Sassoon, writing idealistic war poems early in World War I, such as "The Soldier," which opens with these lines, "If I should die, think only this of me; / That there's some corner of a foreign field / That is for ever England." His poems served as convenient patriotic war propaganda for the British during World War I. Brooke died early in the war (April 23, 1915) of an infected mosquito bite before he ever saw action at Gallipoli, where his unit was headed. He is buried on the Greek island of Skyros, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea._


	12. Chapter 12: Foster

**Chapter 12: Foster**

"Army life is all about cleaning." That's what my uncle, who was in the last war, always used to say. "You wash whatever is dirty, sweep and mop whatever is muddy, and polish whatever is smudged."

And boy was he right. When I joined up, I knew I would spend plenty of time keeping my uniform clean and my boots polished, and cleaning my quarters and base, and I did. I never expected to find myself dusting the private quarters of a German POW Kommandant, though.

But . . . here I am.

There's no special mission this time to make it interesting. Colonel Hogan just wants us to have a regularly established habit of cleaning the Kommandant's quarters in case we _do_ need access to them. I haven't done it before, but I drew the job today. I was supposed to have help from Carter, but the Colonel needed him working on explosives down in the tunnel so I said I could take care of it by myself.

Curiously, I'm alone here in the Kommandant's quarters. Corporal Langenscheidt is officially supervising me, but he had to step out when one of the other guards called him, I didn't hear about what. Langenscheidt said that he'd search me when he got back, so I'd better not take anything—as if I would. I'm no thief! Well, unless perhaps it looked like something Colonel Hogan might need. Even then, informing the Colonel about it rather than taking it myself would be the standard procedure. But that's not likely on such an ordinary day like today. So here I am alone, dusting the furniture.

I'm being careful, using a cloth to wipe down each surface instead of a feather duster. My mother always said that feather dusters don't clean dirt, they just spread it. She wouldn't have one in the house.

I'm finishing up with the bedroom, which is small but crowded with heavy oak furniture. I dust the headboard, which is elaborate and hand carved, so it takes a while, and the nightstand with its lamp, and then the carved chair back, and the flower stand, and I finally work my way around to the Kommandant's tall chest of drawers. It has a small swing mirror on top that I can't resist checking my own appearance in: it isn't cracked like the one in the barracks. I'm so used to seeing my face broken in the mirror while shaving that I've begun to wonder if my face is cracked too! It's nice to see it whole for once.

After I clean the mirror's wood frame, I dutifully pick up the three framed photographs on top of the chest to dust them one by one. The first two have the Kommandant in them—younger, with more hair. In one, he stands with another young man who looks like him: his brother, I'd guess. In another, he stands with an older woman he also resembles, who is probably his mother. I get them wiped off and set them back in place.

The third picture gets my attention, though, as I pick it up. It shows two girls, maybe about sixteen or seventeen years old, both wearing old-fashioned white cotton or linen summer dresses, tied with a slightly darker wide sash just above the waist, light green maybe, or more likely blue, I guess. Each has pinned up her long hair in a loose bun, though they are hatless; one is blonde, the other brunette. They stand side by side, their arms wound affectionately around each other's waists, staring at whoever was taking the picture with light smiles, the corners of their mouths just turned up slightly, their eyes shining. They look very happy. I stare back at the two of them, mesmerized.

"What are you doing?!" The voice is ice cold with violation and anger and authority, and it's all too recognizable from more roll call speeches than I can count. I nearly drop the ornate picture frame in shock and fright, barely catching it in time as I look up at Kommandant Klink standing in the bedroom doorway. I guess he came into his quarters and I didn't hear him without Langenscheidt in the other room to salute him. He must have thought his quarters were empty.

He's standing drawn upright rigidly, as military and as German as he can be, his eyes narrowed with suspicion as he stares at me through his monocle, his riding crop clutched tightly under his arm.

"I – I'm sorry, Herr Kommandant," I stammer out. "I'm dusting—you know, cleaning your quarters." I wish Colonel Hogan were here to deal with the Kommandant, but I'm on my own.

"You were staring at my private photographs," he answers, still radiating disapproval, and I'm afraid I'm going to wind up in the cooler, even though I don't quite know for what.

I blush and nod—hopelessly honest, as my brother always says, at least when I'm taken by surprise. "Yes—I'm sorry, sir. I just . . . this one reminds me very much of a picture my mother has, that's been on the mantle at home ever since I can remember."

I can see the Kommandant thaw just slightly, and I hurry on. "It's of my mother and her sister, taken when they were about fifteen or sixteen, and they're wearing dresses like these with their hair pinned up this way—it's really very much like these girls, so much that I couldn't help noticing, it reminded me so much of home before the war. . . ." I trail off, not sure if I'm making my case better or worse.

The Kommandant comes into the bedroom and takes the picture from me, rescuing it probably. He takes a long look at it then sets it carefully back on the chest without speaking or looking at me.

"They're both very pretty," I add softly, hoping I sound sufficiently respectful.

" _Ja_ ," he replies, his voice and eyes distant but softer, while he too stares at the picture. "This reminds me too of home, before the war—the last war, not this one."

That fits: their outfits look like they come from maybe thirty years ago. "May I ask who they are, sir?"

"My sister, Emma, and her best friend, Ella." He pauses, then adds softly, almost unconsciously, "My fiancée."

I stare at him, floored, wondering if Colonel Hogan knows this. "Uh, congratulations, sir?"

"Not now," he snaps, mad again. "That was a long time ago."

"I'm sorry, sir," I answer quickly. I know I should probably drop the subject, but I'm curious, and I know Colonel Hogan will want to know about this. "What—what happened? If you don't mind me asking, sir." I speak as politely as I can, hoping he'll answer my question.

The Kommandant shrugs this time, his mood seeming to change from anger to sadness. "The Great War happened. This photograph," his hand lightly touches the frame as he speaks, "was taken not long before it all started, when we were all young, all friends. Ella often stayed with us: my family approved of hers, as they were old aristocracy. My parents desired the connection with them, first through the school friendship with my sister Emma, then through marriage between Ella and myself. It was arranged for when she reached her majority, and we were all happy with the engagement. But then the War came, and her parents would not consent to our marriage until it was over. They did not wish her to be left a widow if I were killed. But though I survived the War, Ella died in the influenza outbreak in 1918, before I returned home." His eyes still rest on her image as he speaks.

I look at her too, frozen forever young and happy there. "I'm sorry, sir," I repeat, but I really mean it this time. "It's odd," I add hesitantly, then hurry on, aware of him looking at me sharply again, "because my aunt, in the picture at home I told you about, she and my mother both got the influenza in the epidemic too. Mother recovered, but Aunt Lena died from it." The Kommandant continues to watch me, not angry this time, just listening. "I never knew her," I add though I don't know why, maybe just because he looks interested, "but Mother has always kept the picture of the two of them up on the mantelpiece where she can see her each day. She says it was a comfort to know that Aunt Lena had met my father before she got sick, so her husband and sister had known and liked each other."

The Kommandant turns back toward the door of his bedroom. "That is not always an advantage," he says distantly.

"No, sir?" I'm not sure what he means, but I'm afraid to ask directly.

Colonel Klink pauses for a moment before answering. "My mother and sister both loved Ella. As far as they are concerned, no other woman can compare with her. I brought home a young lady once—just once. I will not make that mistake again." His eyes narrow as he looks at the family pictures, then abruptly he stiffens up again.

I hear the door open and Langenscheidt enters the outer room, calling my name, "Foster?"

The Kommandant draws himself up further, rigid and remote and very military, then he exits the room. I peek out the bedroom door as he stalks toward Langenscheidt, who looks like he's about to melt from fear.

"Do not leave prisoners unattended in my quarters, Corporal!" He taps his swagger stick against his leg twice.

" _Nein_ , Herr Kommandant! I-I-I mean _ja_ , Herr Kommandant! I mean, I will not, Herr Kommandant! I am sorry—Private Bomgardner called me—"

"I do not care!" snaps the Kommandant in return. "Do not leave prisoners unattended in my quarters."

" _Jawohl_ , Herr Kommandant! I will search him to be sure he has taken nothing."

"See that you do," the Kommandant says curtly, then leaves for his office. The door thuds closed behind him. I can see Langenscheidt take a deep breath, and I wait for him to turn the anger on me that the Kommandant dumped on him.

"Are you finished?" he asks instead, his tone quiet.

"Yes," I tell him, looking back at the chest of drawers, clean of dust, its pictures in order, the two young girls in their pretty outfits looking back at me. "You can search me now," I offer, raising my hands over my head, not wanting him to get in more trouble.

Langenscheidt runs his hands lightly over my pockets and around my waist, nothing more, then after I stow away the cleaning equipment he accompanies me out to the porch. I wish him a good afternoon and walk slowly down the pathway to the compound, thinking of two girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes, divided by an ocean and a war but united in the same sad fate, and how different life might have been for many people if they had both survived to grow old.

ooOoo

 _Author's Note: Foster is a minor character from the episode "Will the Real Adolf Please Stand Up?" William Christopher (best known as Father Mulcahy on M*A*SH) played the role. I've used him very briefly as a background character in a couple of other stories. Klink's bedroom furniture is described as it appears in "Will the Real Colonel Klink Please Stand Against the Wall?" although the photographs are my own invention._

 _The 1918 Influenza Pandemic (also known as the Spanish Flu in most Allied countries, but as Flanders Fever or Flanders Grippe or Flanders Flu by the Germans and the Japanese at the time) was one of the most devastating natural disasters in human history: between one quarter and one-third of the people on earth caught the flu; most recovered, but the mortality rates were extraordinarily high. Somewhere between 50 and 100 million people died from it in two years, with two-thirds of those deaths occurring in the fall of 1918. (Fatality figures were initially estimated in the 1920s at around 21 million people, but modern scholarship has revised them substantially upwards, partly because deaths in the early parts of the pandemic were significantly underreported.) The numbers are staggering: the flu killed approximately a quarter of a million people in Britain, over 400,000 in France, another 400,000 civilians in Germany, and over 550,000 in the United States (including, according to family lore, my own great grandmother). In Philadelphia alone 11,000 people died, 759 of them in a single day on October 10, 1918. The reach of the pandemic was truly global: in India, one of the worst hit countries, around 17 million people lost their lives. A number of Pacific island territories of the time had the worst fatality percentages: Western Samoa, for example, lost over 20 percent of its population in two months. Some Inuit villages in Alaska and Canada were nearly entirely wiped out._

 _The spread of the flu was probably exacerbated by World War I, partly because the extra transportation of people and materials around the globe in support of the war helped spread the disease. Another reason was that war time conditions (high concentrations of younger people in military camps vs. the more ordinary conditions of families in separate houses) fostered the evolution of a particularly virulent strain. The 1918 flu was 25 times more deadly than most; unlike most flu strains that are most deadly for children and the elderly, it mainly attacked adults between the ages of 20 and 40, meaning that hundreds of thousands of children were orphaned as their parents died. The casualties included large numbers of soldiers on all sides of the war. Experts estimate that half of the U.S. soldiers who died in World War I were killed by the flu, many in training camps before they shipped overseas. German troops were so badly affected that the military leadership couldn't replace the number of sick and dying soldiers in the field; they lost one critical battle (and thus perhaps even the war) as a result. John M. Barry, in his book "Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History," observes that more people died from the flu in 1918 than died from the Black Death in a century (although the bubonic plague killed a far higher percentage of the population at the time). We will hope that we never see a pandemic outbreak of that magnitude again. By the way, if you don't get an annual flu shot, it is a good idea. It's not a guaranteed prevention, but it's the best protection we have._


	13. Chapter 13: Chapman

**Chapter 13: Chapman**

Roll call. Again. We stand in our usual places in our usual lines in the usual way, shuffling our feet, wrapped in every wool garment we own, trying to keep warm.

I look up at the sky, which was a forbidding gray all day long, making the whole camp dim long before the early sunset. That's at about 1630 hours these days. At this season of the year, just a few days short of the solstice and Christmas, there's less than eight hours of light. Under heavy cloud cover, like today, there's even less. Each day we're up for morning roll call in the dark and standing here for evening roll call in the dark too. Today it felt like it never got light. And tonight there's no sign of stars.

It would be lighter tonight if it had snowed. I remember from last winter how the snow radiated the light from the searchlights, so it didn't feel so dark. But there's been no snow this season, not even today; just dark gray cold weather.

That makes Colonel Hogan happy. He wants it dark at night, which is safer for night operations. Light from snow might make it easier to see for our crew while out on missions, but easier for our side to see also means they are more easily seen, which is not a tactical advantage. Plus snow means footprints, which mean increased risk for all operations outside the wire. The Colonel doesn't like much of fall or spring either: it's hard to sneak through the woods for operations with a lot of rustling leaves on the ground in autumn, and there's too much mud from melted snow or rain in the spring, which means more tracks the guards could notice. Despite weather drawbacks, though, Colonel Hogan always finds ways to manage London's assignments.

No one else wants snow either. Not just because of the operation, but just in terms of daily living. Every man in camp agrees that standing for roll call is worse in the snow, as the cold from the ice on the ground gradually penetrates our boots till we're standing on blocks of ice that used to be our feet. It's hard to get warm after that.

So no one wants snow.

Except me.

Okay, it's stereotypically Canadian to like snow, sure. Self-defense, really. If winter is going to occupy five to six months out of the year, you have to learn to enjoy it or you'll go crazy. So we know how to have fun with it, eh?

Ice is great. I love skating and playing hockey on frozen ponds. I love ice fishing way out on the in the middle of the frozen lake where you can see the whole sky, especially on a clear night under a full moon, when the sky is the deepest darkest blue it can be without becoming black, and only the brightest stars stay out to chase the moon, twinkling at us with a crystalline clarity you never get in the summer.

Snow is even better. I remember snowball fights when I was a boy with my brothers, when battles were just for fun and not deadly. Constructing snow forts, spending whole afternoons to get the placement right and build up the walls as high as you can go without them tumbling down, then filling them up with snowball ammo, at hand for any attack.

Deep snow meant snowshoeing across fields and through woods, floating in the snow just below the surface. I was so proud when I learned to walk without the straddle-gait of a beginner, and always loved hiking across fields in them.

Or even better, cross country skiing: gliding fast on the surface of the snow across meadow or through trails in the woods, with all the tree branches buried under the snow and ready to dump it on you with the smallest disturbance. It's like getting your own personal blizzard in the space of five seconds when that happens. Like ice fishing, skiing is best on a still night, when the trail is lit by the moon, pearlescent snow against darkly luminescent sky, all sound muffled by the blanket of snow. I remember skiing through the woods one night like that: I turned my head and saw a doe just to the side of the trail in the woods. I'd surprised her and she surprised me: despite the deep cold silence, neither of us had heard the other. I came to a dead halt, and she and I just _stared_ at each other, a couple of feet apart, the sound of our breaths puffing out in small vapor clouds the only sound in the world. Finally, she decided the stranger with the absurdly long feet was no danger but of no interest either and calmly picked her way across the trail in front of me and vanished into the trees.

Or sledding on our family toboggan with my brothers: the anticipation while climbing the hill, dragging it behind us, which was hard work and took all three of us because the toboggan knows its job is to slide _down_ and going uphill is unnatural for it, so it drags and fights and makes you work to get it up to the top of the hill. And of course once we're finally up there, then there's the fight about who gets to ride in front, the best spot, despite knowing we're supposed to take turns. And if the light is going and it's the final run of the afternoon, winning the argument and going first for that last slide is the sweetest victory of all. (Being the youngest can sometimes be an advantage.) So we pile onto the toboggan, getting our feet arranged right, and Troy, my oldest brother, does the push to get the run started. It's agonizingly slow on the soft snow at the top till finally we hit the polished snow of the run and pick up speed as Troy climbs on. I begin to feel wind pushing cold at my cheeks, even through my muffler, invading deep into my lungs, till my breath comes back out warm inside my muffler as I yell, hearing my other brother Bill howl just as loud in my ear as the hill takes us like the current of a stream going over a waterfall. There's nothing we can do but hold tight and roar our way down the hill, hoping to keep the toboggan straight so it won't turn out and spill the three of us across the slope, leaving the sled to continue on without us, lightened of its load and usually headed for the trees. But if we do hold on, the speed gets dizzying until it feels like the toboggan is a plane without wings, the only plane I've ever piloted, and even seems to lift off the earth in spots, and all I want to do is feel it lift us right into the sky even as we're flying downhill. But soon, far too soon, we reach the flat meadow below and shoot out across it, gradually slowing till we come to a halt, our hearts beating out of our chests as we gasp and laugh and lie there till finally the cold begins to seep in and we begin the process of untangling ourselves so that we can trudge home, hauling the now lethargic toboggan behind us.

No hills in Stalag 13, or sleds either. I guess those belong to boyhood, and I'm no longer a boy, just a downed airman in a POW camp I'm not allowed to escape from.

But we do get some snow here, and I'm looking forward to its arrival, even if no one else is. No one would ever call Stalag 13 pretty, but it looks better when it's partly hidden under a blanket of snow than when it's all dirt or mud, and the woods around camp look much prettier when the trees are wearing snow on their branches. Last winter they reminded me of the woods near our home when the snow falls.

I've wondered how much German kids play in the snow like we did, and I even asked Schultz once if he'd ever been sledding as a boy and what his sled had been like if he had. His eyes lit up.

" _Ach, ja! Schlitteln_ , we call it. I did enjoy that as a boy! Our sleds looked like small sleighs back then, with a seat for one child to ride on while the other stood on the back on the runners and pushed and slid. I would put my little sister in front for sliding."

His eyes look soft with affection as he remembers their shared childhood, and I wonder where his sister is now, just as I wonder where my brothers are. They both joined the Navy and are somewhere out in the Pacific—alive and safe, I hope. The reminder that if anything happens to them I won't hear about it for months leaves, as always, a bitter taste in my mouth. I wonder how long it took them to hear I was okay after our plane was shot down?

A soft touch on my cheek rouses me from the dark turn that my thoughts have taken. I feel another light kiss, cold and hovering before sweetly melting right on the corner of my mouth, and my lips turn up as I look upwards, seeing large soft flakes floating down. I hear a disgruntled sigh from Colonel Hogan down at the end of the row ahead of me, echoed by Kinch and several others. But I take my hands out of my pockets and spread them out to catch the winter confetti, celebrating its arrival inside me, even if no one else will share my pleasure.

" _Bon Hiver_ ," I whisper softly, recalling the blessing of my Québécois grandfather during the first snow fall of each year, as I welcome the snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes that signal the arrival of winter.

ooOoo

Author's Note: Chapman is a minor original character of mine, established as being from near Toronto in my story "Giving Thanks."

The idea behind the end of this story is totally snitched from _Northern Exposure_ 's fifth season episode, "First Snow." At the end of the episode, the inhabitants of Cicely, Alaska all come out from their homes to enjoy the magic of the first snow of the season, wishing each other " _Bon Hiver_ " in celebration (French for "good winter," or probably a better translation for the context would be "happy winter"). Though I don't remember anything else from that episode, that moment has stuck with me for years. I think of it whenever we get a first snow, which always makes me miss the northern winters I loved when I was a kid. From looking up information on the _Northern Exposure_ episode, I don't think such a saying is a general practice anywhere in Canada or Alaska, but I'm pretending it is within Chapman's family. Here at the 2015 solstice (which happens everywhere on earth at the same moment; 11:48 pm eastern time on 12/21/15 in the US if you're curious), I wish all of you _Bon Hiver_ too. (Although for the Australians and New Zealanders among my readers, I suppose I must wish you _Bon_ _É_ _té_ instead!)


	14. Chapter 14: Kinchloe

**Chapter 14: Kinch**

 _Author's Note: In earlier stories (notably "Swapping Generals") I've departed from canon to make Kinch the only black American soldier in camp. I've based this chapter on the same assumption; see note at end for further explanation._

ooOoo

Some days, I feel like I am surrounded by white.

For starters, I mean that literally for the weather we've been having recently. Winter is holding on hard this year, and we got yet another snow last night. We have some film of documents with V1 rocket information and locations that we were able to photograph when one of Klink's World War I buddies came through camp for a visit yesterday; obtaining that was a tricky but neat little operation. We need to get it out to our underground contacts, but we're snowbound at the moment. _Again_. There's no getting out of the tunnel and through the woods without being caught: we're too visible against that white background and we'd leave footprints in the fresh snow that even the Stalag 13 guards wouldn't be able to miss. Klink isn't buying any reason for us to go into town in this weather, not even another toothache from Newkirk (I think he's getting wise to that excuse), so Colonel Hogan has been reduced to hoping Oscar Schnitzer can get it out when he changes the dogs the day after tomorrow. Getting the film to him will be risky, but if we wait much later than that the info won't get to London in time for them to use it. And it's all diagrams and maps, so not something we can radio over to them.

The only guy still happy about snow is Chapman. I refuse to believe that snow near Toronto is somehow better than it is in Detroit, given that they're less than 250 miles apart. Sure, I remember liking the first snow each year, but by March and April I was always tired of it, like I am now. But Chapman still smiles and spreads his hands out to catch the flakes as they fall and tries to organize snowball fights or building snowmen in the compound. He says that late snows are the best of the season because they're always wet and heavy enough for packing the best snowballs. Crazy Canadian . . . it's nearly April, and high time for spring, I say.

But it's not just the whiteness of snow that's getting to me this year. It's also being the only black man in a sea of white.

I don't mean that I get harassed badly here at Stalag 13. Colonel Hogan is as decent a man as has ever drawn breath, and he made it clear to everyone from the day I got here that nothing like that would happen under his command. He even put me in the bunk right by his door, so he'd hear if anyone tried to give me a hard time. Not that that turned out to be an issue in Barracks 2. LeBeau buddied up to me, and Newkirk followed suit. With the two of them on my side, everyone else fell in line too. Now I'm in my bunk by the office door so I'm handy if the Colonel needs me, and I think I keep an eye on him more than he does on me these days.

The Colonel assesses everyone who arrives at Stalag 13 for the skills they have and what they can contribute to his vision of the operation, and he did the same for me when I got here. He was impressed with my radio knowledge and put me in charge of that side of the operation immediately, but beyond that he saw a potential in me that no other officer ever bothered to look for since I got drafted. He's given me a level of trust and responsibility I know damn well I wouldn't have anywhere else in this war. He even trusts me to tell him when his ideas have problems, and not just be a yes man. The way I see it, he gives orders for the operation and I help keep order in the operation. And I like to think that by doing my job I've earned the respect of the other men here in camp, especially those in Barracks 2. I may not go out on as many missions outside the wire as they do—there's just no way I can pass for German undercover most of the time except over the phone—but I still get my share of night operations, depending on the nature of the mission. Not to mention that the Colonel trusting me to hold everything together at home base when the rest of them are out is an honor that I appreciate deeply.

So I get on fine here at Stalag 13—as well as anyone here does, anyway. But still . . . I never realized until I got here how much I took for granted being with black people like myself. Now I know that every man here in Stalag 13 misses his home town; I'm no different than anyone else that way. But still, there's a difference. It's easy to feel, but hard to explain. For instance, there's a couple of guys from Detroit here in camp. Usually guys from the same area get tight, share memories, but . . . well, let's just say those two and I are from different parts of town. Not much crossover in what we remember of home: food, bars, music, church—you name it, we know different ones. That's because while folks of different colors may work together on the assembly line in Mr. Ford's auto plants, their living neighborhoods don't overlap in the city of Detroit. When my father and uncle moved up from Georgia back in the twenties, getting away from tenant farming that wasn't much better than slavery to find industrial jobs that paid real wages, they moved into Black Bottom; that's where my papa met mama and married her, and where I grew up, though as I got a bit older I loved spending as much time as I could in Paradise Alley, the business district next to it. But there's very few whites that venture into Paradise Alley, and I can't remember ever seeing one anywhere near our house.

I can never decide what I miss most from there—aside from my family, of course. Maybe walking down St. Antoine to the corner of Adams: standing there you can hear jazz coming from half a dozen clubs up and down the two streets. My buddies and I would go to two or three in a night, taking in bands at Brown Bomber Chicken Shack, Club Paradise, or Harlem Cave. If we wanted to really impress a young lady we were taking out, we'd head to the Plantation Club in the basement of the Norwood Hotel, for its chorus line, singers, dancers, and swing band, all headed up by Detroit's own bandleader Earl Walton. I've seen Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington—all the greats come through Detroit. I even learned some bass tricks from Walter Page in the Count Basie Orchestra one night. They're all better than Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey; I know Colonel Hogan and a bunch of the other guys here like those guys, but to me they're just pale imitations, so to speak, of the _real_ jazz masters.

Or maybe training under Eddie Futch at the Brewster Wheeler Rec Center: the boxing lessons I got from that man taught me more about fighting than I ever learned in the army's basic training. I once saw Joe Louis, the Brown Bomber himself, training there, having come back for the afternoon to the gym from which he'd first made it big. He punched the bag there for an hour, put a dent in it so big that nobody else could use it afterwards. No one minded: Joe Louis could do whatever he wanted and get nothing but admiration from all of us there. It was a privilege to watch him at work.

But probably I miss the intangibles from home the most: the odors coming from the restaurants as I walk by, hearing the choir sing at church, little everyday things like that. I guess if I have to pick, it's the voices I miss most of all, the language of my people, the cadence of speech of the preachers at church on Sundays, the bossing and teasing of all the women, from my mama to all the girls I dated, the ways they showed they cared about us boys. Yeah, that's what I miss most.

Guess I'm singing the blues to myself at the moment, feeling lonely for home. We all do that here from time to time. Blues about white right now, I suppose, from all that new snow. Chapman's always pointing out how pretty snow is, not taking into account what a problem it is for the operation—though he is right that the snow blanket can make this corner of Germany beautiful, at least when it first falls. But even if there's some beauty to silver white winter around here, I stand out too much at that season in the wrong ways, so I'm looking forward to it melting into spring when the earth is black and covered with green—those are my colors, and I wear them proudly, whether I stand out or blend in.

ooOoo

 _Author's Note: Kinch's presence in camp before the invasion is historically very unlikely, especially given the racial segregation enforced in all branches of the armed services throughout the war. African American soldiers were eventually (in 1944) given combat opportunities, which they and their community leaders saw as an important stepping stone on the road to true equal rights for all black Americans. But that's far too late to explain Kinch's presence in camp, let alone Baker or Broughton or the other black POWs seen in the background of various episodes. I strongly believe that the producers of "Hogan's Heroes" were consciously supporting the Civil Rights Movement's agenda by including Kinch, Baker, and the other black characters on the show: they certainly didn't have to do any such thing given the setting of the show, and the fact that "I Spy" (1965-1968) was the only other show on the air that had a major African American character on it. ("Star Trek" with Nichelle Nichols as Uhura didn't start until 1966; Snooky also reminded me that "Mission Impossible," which started that year too, had a major African American character: Barney Collier, played by Greg Morris.) I admire the stories in the HH fandom that have come up with ingenious explanations for the presence of African American soldiers in the camp; if I had a better imagination maybe I could come up with a good explanation too! But I've chosen to keep Kinch as an anomaly, which seems to me slightly more historically likely, though uncanonical in terms of the show._

 _I've based Kinch's memories of home on some research about Detroit in the 1920s and '30s, when he would have been a boy. I've made his father a part of the Great Migration, the movement of six million African Americans out of the rural south and into the industrial urban north between 1910 and 1970. Kinch's Detroit background as given on the show (including his expertise in boxing and playing bass in a jazz combo) fits the cultural backdrop of Detroit well: it was the city that produced Joe Louis, the world heavyweight champion from 1937 to 1949, generally regarded as the first black American to be regarded as a nationwide hero. Also, the joint Black Bottom residential neighborhood (named not for its residents but by the initial French settlers of the area for the rich soil of the river valley) and the adjoining Paradise Alley business district were a large and economically powerful African American area within the city._

 _Paradise Alley was home to many jazz clubs in which the great black jazz artists played. It was also a place where some adventurous and liberal-minded whites would come to hear jazz with black audiences; such places were rare in the United States of the 1930s and '40s. Jazz aficionados differ in their opinions of the role race played in the development of the genre: while many of the great originators of different jazz styles were blacks, whites played important roles too and some (like Benny Goodman) reached across racial lines to integrate jazz bands. But white bands were often preferred by white consumers of jazz and usually got the higher paying gigs in mainstream venues; moreover, some critics regarded "white jazz" as distinctly different from (and sometimes less authentic than) the jazz produced by black musicians. Kinch thus articulates a common perception of his time and culture. Hogan, by contrast, in various episodes of the show mostly mentions white jazz musicians as popular with the men in camp (Tommy Dorsey notably), and the one jazz standard we see him play drums for, "Cherokee" in "Look at the Pretty Snowflakes," is by Ray Noble, an English composer and bandleader._


	15. Chapter 15: Barracks 2

**Chapter 15: Barracks 2**

The men of Barracks 2 were not happy.

LeBeau and Newkirk were nursing dog bites. Kinch and Carter were grumbling loudly over bee stings. Colonel Hogan was rubbing the bridge of his nose, hoping to soothe the headache throbbing behind his eyes. As well-trained soldiers in the midst of a battle, all the other inhabitants of the barracks were laying low in their bunks; some were even using their blankets as cover. Wilson, who had been summoned by tunnel to tend to the injured, was the lone exception.

"That is the last time I trust you to know what you're doing with dogs," Newkirk snarled at LeBeau.

"The German Shepherds in camp always listen to me," LeBeau growled defensively. "How was I to know that Little Boy Blue's Pomeranian wouldn't?"

"Maybe because the bloody little mutt wasn't trained by Schnitzer to like POWs? Don't tell me you have 'a special touch with dogs' ever again!" Newkirk shot back.

"Fine, I will bring my special dog biscuits as standard equipment on all future missions," LeBeau snapped in response.

"I toldja I shoulda gone wit' you," Carter mumbled, his speech muffled both by a swollen upper lip and Wilson's attempts to remove the stinger left behind by the bee. "I been there before. Hey Doc, when will I know if I'm allergic to bee stings? I've never been stung before."

"If you were allergic, you'd have gone into anaphylactic shock long before this," Wilson answered testily. "Now stop talking and hold still. I've still got five stingers to get out of Kinch once I'm done with you."

"That's right, so shut up already, Andrew." Kinch was holding onto his leg, and his temper, with both hands by this point. His grip on the former was tight; his grip on the latter was precarious.

"You just wanted to see that stupid pony," Newkirk accused Carter in withering tones.

"Better than wanting to drool over a fifteen-year-old girl," Carter replied tartly. "OW! Watch it, Doc! That burns like heck!"

"I'm sure it does. If it was a month ago, I'd get you a handful of snow to put on the sting, but at this season you'll have to settle for just a cold wet compress."

"If it was a month ago, it would still have been winter and there wouldn't have been any bees," Kinch noted, still tight lipped. He glanced over at Newkirk and LeBeau. "I suppose the Pomeranian would still have been a danger, whether it was winter or spring," he added sarcastically.

"Here," Wilson interrupted him, handing a cool wet towel to Carter. "Keep this on the sting for the next half hour at least."

"My papa always used crushed garlic," Garlotti advised from the safety of his bunk.

"Don't even think about using my garlic cloves," LeBeau warned.

"Well, my mother always used lavender oil," Pike suggested.

"Oh, we have lots of that lying around in a camp full of hundreds of men," Wilson said, rolling his eyes.

"Though my uncle believed in applying freshly chewed tobacco to the sting," Pike added. "Plenty of tobacco around here," he noted mischievously.

"Yech!" Carter looked appalled.

"Rhubarb juice," was Barnes's contribution. "You split open the stem and squeeze the juice on the sting."

"Nope, meat tenderizer," Greenberg overrode him. "You make a paste of it with water."

"A paste, yes, but of baking soda with a dab of vinegar and water," Davis chimed in.

"No, a copper penny held on with a bandage. Works every time," Chapman asserted.

"My brother swore by using urine on it, said the ammonia would neutralize the acid of the venom," Olsen said.

All heads swiveled to look at him.

"You are _no_ t trying _that_ on me!" Carter insisted.

"Me either!" Kinch added grimly, glaring at Olsen, who just shrugged and grinned lazily.

"Just being helpful," he drawled.

"Not a medically recommended procedure," Wilson interjected dryly. "Carter, keep the compress on. Kinchole, let's take a look at that leg of yours."

"So neither pair of you managed to finish tonight's missions?" Hogan asked, shifting the topic onto his major concern, now that it was apparent that the injuries, while uncomfortable, weren't serious. Given his tone, most of the other men retreated back under their blankets again.

If it was possible to skulk while sitting in the middle of the barracks with a dozen pairs of eyes on them, LeBeau, Newkirk, Carter, and Kinchloe all managed it.

"Ah, well you see, sir, we had some difficulties," Newkirk began. He didn't seem to be able to find a following sentence after that introduction, though.

Hogan's eyebrows went up interrogatively as he crossed his arms in front of his chest. "I'm waiting, gentlemen. Newkirk, LeBeau, you were supposed to pick up intelligence on the change of train schedules from Little Boy Blue. Carter, Kinch, you had a simple scouting mission: examine the bridge at Niederfeld to assess how we could mine it. So just how did _both_ pairs of you manage to bungle your assignments in a single evening?"

Newkirk looked at Kinch and Carter for help, but Kinch's attention was fully occupied by Wilson hunting for the bees' stingers to pull out from his leg, and Carter had slunk behind the bunk post as much as he could, leaving Newkirk and LeBeau to their fate.

"I'm waiting," Hogan reminded them testily again. "Given that I couldn't go because I was trapped spending the evening with Klink, _and_ that he played his violin for me for over an hour, you four—" his eyes swept over the four of them, not excluding Kinchloe despite the sergeant's grimace of pain as Wilson grunted in satisfaction over successfully removing a stinger "—had better have a good reason for not accomplishing either mission objective simply because I wasn't along to supervise you."

"We ran into the bee hive a mile short of the bridge," Kinch answered for himself and Carter with a sigh since Wilson had just finished extracting the last stinger. "Carter managed to bump right smack into the nest, the bees all streamed out of it and attacked us, and we ran like hell away from it. Turned out we were running back the way we came, but by the time we'd shaken them we weren't in any shape to do much besides limp back here."

"I thought bees were diurnal, and you can't get stung at night," Hogan remarked skeptically.

"I guess they don't care what time of day or night it is if you run smack into their nest," Kinch said acidly, glaring over at Carter, who was still trying to hide behind the bunk post. "I'd suggest a different route of approach when we reconnoiter next time. That path is better guarded by the bees than most others are by the Germans."

"Well, what about you two?" Hogan asked, apparently accepting Kinch's explanation for failing to get the bridge specifications and shifting his attention back to Newkirk and LeBeau.

The two of them both looked at each other silently, neither apparently desiring to explain.

Hogan didn't ask again: he just kept watching them steadily.

Newkirk cracked first. "We forgot the code, and Little Boy Blue wouldn't give us the information without it," he mumbled, eyes on the floor.

Hogan unfolded his arms. "Come again?" he asked, not quite believing what he'd heard.

"We forgot the code!" Newkirk sounded defensive, as well he might. "Well, not so much forgot it as didn't remember it," he went on, voice lowered again. "I thought LeBeau had memorized it."

"And I thought Newkirk knew it, so I only looked it over a couple of times," LeBeau said contritely. "So we said it a little wrong, and Little Boy Blue became suspicious and raised his pitchfork, and then the dog attacked, and neither of us could remember it right after that."

"And you two gave _me_ a hard time about remembering the code when I first made contact with him on my birthday," Carter grumbled. "You shoulda let me go to the farm, Colonel. At least Little Boy Blue knows me."

"You're the munitions man. I needed your assessment of the bridge," Hogan reminded him. "For that matter, I _still_ need it, but it looks like it'll be a couple of days before I get it." He turned back to Newkirk and LeBeau. "So the two of you couldn't remember the code because a _Pomeranian_ nipped you." The Colonel's voice dripped acid irony with each word.

"More like having half a dozen darning needles driven deep into my leg!" Newkirk snapped back, less respectfully than was wise for a man in his CO's doghouse.

Hogan turned to Wilson, who was now applying a set of cold poultices, this time to Kinch's leg. "Just how bad are those bites?" he asked, still obviously skeptical.

Wilson shrugged. "Deeper than I'd like, but not dangerous. Fortunately, they're both up on their tetanus shots." He paused. "Newkirk's bite marks go well into the epidermis. I think LeBeau's may have broken very slightly into the muscle beneath. Both bled well, which is a good sign; that cleans them out."

"Bled well?" Hogan looked at LeBeau, another reason for the fiasco dawning on him. "Don't tell me: you fainted, right?"

LeBeau flushed red in embarrassment. "I may have _passed out_ from the pain. I certainly did not _faint_." He glared balefully at Newkirk, who held up his hands.

"Nice distinction, that is. Don't look at me like that, mate. _I_ didn't tell him."

"As you certainly well should have!" Hogan snapped. He stared at the two of them for a long moment, as they simultaneously hung their heads. "So what happened at that point?" Hogan finally asked Newkirk. The tone of his voice suggested he was still withholding final judgment.

"LeBeau keeled over and just laid there. Little Boy Blue collared the dog and took him off to his barn. He didn't say anything except that the dog had had its shots; I think he was afraid to in case we were Gestapo or something."

"Somehow I don't think anyone would have thought at that point that you two jokers were Gestapo," Kinch said from his bunk.

Newkirk glowered at him. "From where you're sitting, it don't look to me like you've got much room to criticize."

Hogan made an impatient circular motion with his hand. "Finish it up, Newkirk."

The Englishman nodded and went on obediently. "LeBeau came to, I got him on his feet, and we both started to hike back here. It took long enough with both of us limping. That's about it, sir." He paused. "I'm sorry, Colonel. It won't happen again." Everyone could hear the genuine contrition in his voice.

" _Oui, moi aussi,_ " LeBeau added, equally apologetic. Everyone knew if he was using French, he was serious about his promise.

"No, it certainly won't. In the future, you'll both repeat all code phrases to both me and Kinch, separately, for any mission that involves them, before leaving camp." Hogan fixed them with a level stare that got both of them nodding in obedience without a word of complaint.

"Okay," Hogan went on, "it has certainly been a night of disasters. We've been lucky most of the time; I guess all the bad luck caught up to us tonight, from Klink's insistence I spend the evening listening to his new violin piece to your misadventures." He shook his head, but his voice had more resignation than anger in it, and everyone relaxed. A few of the men even pulled back their blankets and ventured to sit up on their bunks.

"You feel lucky being in Stalag 13, Colonel?" Olsen asked, daringly.

Hogan turned to regard him. "I'd say we're all lucky. We're alive and here. There are other camps a lot worse. And we've had the chance to build an operation here that probably couldn't exist anywhere else."

Davis, never one to see the bright side of anything, said, "Okay, there are worse places. That doesn't make daily life in this one great."

"Ah, there are good things about Stalag 13," Barnes said optimistically.

"Oh, name one," Davis challenged.

Barnes paused to think.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Davis shrugged.

"Klink's roses," Barnes answered.

The others stared at him.

"They're pretty," Barnes said with a shrug. "And Schultz has been letting me care for them since last summer. That's one good thing about Stalag 13. I bet you can think of some others. Davis, there has to be something you like."

"I like it when Red Cross packages show up," Davis admitted grudgingly.

"And mail days are good. I bet my sister Mavis won't send me all her knitting once I get home like she does now," Newkirk contributed.

"There's lots of snow," Chapman offered, only to have his suggestion repelled with groans from the others. "C'mon, you all enjoyed those snowball fights. And just a few minutes ago you were regretting the lack of snow for your bee stings and dog bites."

"Even so, I'm still glad it's spring, not winter," Kinch said, shifting position to see if it would ease his leg.

"I get challenged in cooking here far more than I would at home," LeBeau added thoughtfully.

"And you have a great sous-chef," Greenberg teased.

"Thank the lord," Garlotti muttered.

" _Oui_ , so I do," LeBeau beamed at Greenberg. "Though finding a challenge here does not mean I'm not looking forward to cooking in a properly equipped kitchen!"

"Where you can make tea that doesn't taste like coffee," Newkirk replied drily.

"I shall use a proper copper kettle for your tea whenever you come visit me after the war," LeBeau answered affectionately, and got a return grin from Newkirk.

"What about you, Colonel? What do you like about Stalag 13?" Kinch asked.

Hogan looked around the barracks and smiled. "Well, I'd have to say my favorite thing about Stalag 13 is you fellas. The operation here wouldn't work without all of you. That's thanks to all your efforts, not just those of you who go outside the wire. Maybe I don't remember to say so enough, but I'm always grateful. I know there's a lot of things we all miss about home, but I appreciate you making the best of this place. Maybe we're grounded, but we're not out of the war, and that's thanks to all of you."

Suddenly, each man found himself with a smile on his face.

"All right, that's enough soap," Hogan said, stretching. "It's time for all good little prisoners to get to bed. Tomorrow night I'll go see Little Boy Blue, and we'll survey that bridge soon. We'll be back on track. Olsen, will you see Wilson back to his quarters?"

"Sure thing, Colonel." Olsen dropped down from his bunk as Wilson finished packing his medical kit. They headed down the ladder into the tunnel.

"Good night, fellas," Hogan said, turning toward his quarters as the bunk dropped with its usual clatter down into place.

"Good night, Colonel," chorused the men of Barracks 2, as they all settled down to a well-earned rest. No doubt many would dream of their favorite things that night.

The End

ooOoo

 _Author's Note: 1) "Niederfeld" is a made-up name, not a real place. Don't go looking for it on a map of Germany. 2) Most bees are diurnal, though apparently there are a few nocturnal ones. Bees are sensitive to temperature, so they generally prefer warmer daylight hours. There's a myth that bees don't sting at night, but mostly they're just not active then. Most bees are gentle, not looking to sting you, but they will attack if they feel their hive is threatened. If a bee is up at night it can sting you (especially if you step on or bump into its nest or hive). All the bee sting remedies mentioned are genuine folk remedies, but do let me be clear that I am not recommending any of them!_

 _Thanks for reading, and my appreciation goes to all those who have commented on the story. For those of you who did perhaps miss it: there's a game going in the final lines of all the chapters, allusions to a well-known song from a much loved movie that provided the kernel of inspiration for each one. The allusions are in the same order as the lyrics of the song. Several clever reviewers figured out which one it was, so you can look for their reviews if you want more than that clue to figure it out for yourself. For readers wishing it had gone further: by this chapter I was out of lyrics to allude to, thus the story couldn't go on. I was tempted early on to have chapters for Klink and Schultz, but I decided the story held together better if it was consistently about the prisoners' experiences (and Schultz does make a lot of appearances, while the embedded story from Klink in chapter 12 was intended from very early on in the writing process)._

 _I have loved Hogan's Heroes since the 1970s, but none of its characters are mine; they were created by Bernard Fein and Albert S. Ruddy. I acknowledge their ownership and that of Bing Crosby Productions and intend no copyright infringement. At no point will I or others profit monetarily on this story._


End file.
